Key announcements from the King's Speech 2024

Yesterday (Wednesday 17 July) King Charles delivered the Labour government's first King's Speech in the House of Lords.

Part of the State Opening of Parliament ceremony, the speech marks the start of the parliamentary year and sets out the governments legislative agenda for the next year.

The announcements focus on improving living standards by driving economic growth, the first of Sir Keir Starmer's five "missions for national renewal".

Key points of the announcement include:

• a plan to build more houses and infrastructure;
• nationalise the railways; and
• give greater powers to the UK's fiscal watchdog over spending commitments.

In his introduction to the speech, Starmer said the agenda would "fix the foundations of this nation for the long term" and that it was only the starting point for what he promised would be transformation.

"The era of politics as performance and self-interest above service is over".

"The challenges we face require determined, patient work and serious solutions, rather than the temptation of the easy answer".

Amongst the 40 proposed bills, here are some of the key ones relevant to environment, health and safety, planning and energy sectors:

Planning and housing

Planning and Infrastructure Bill:

• this will "get Britain building" through planning reform, to accelerate the delivery of high-quality infrastructure and housing;
• measures will include changing compulsory purchase compensation rules to ensure that compensation paid to landowners is fair but not excessive where important infrastructure and affordable housing are being delivered;
• improving local planning decision-making by modernising planning committees and increasing local planning authorities' capacity.

Renters' Rights Bill:

• legislation to give greater rights and protections to renters;
• including fulfilling the Conservatives' failed promise to end no fault evictions, giving tenants the right to request a pet, applying a Decent Homes Standard to ensure homes are safe, and making it illegal for landlords to discriminate against tenants in receipt of benefits or with children.

Draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill:

• this will enact remaining Law Commission recommendations on reforming the leasehold system;
• including removing the threat of forfeiture and tackling unregulated and unaffordable ground rents;
• this will be part of steps to ultimately bring the leasehold system to an end, reinvigorating commonhold through a comprehensive new legal framework.

Environment

Great British Energy Bill:

• a bill to set up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power company headquartered in Scotland, which will help accelerate investment in renewable energy such as offshore wind;
• it will develop, own and operate assets with a capitalisation of £8.3 billion of new money over the parliament.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (Revenue Support Mechanism) Bill:

• a bill to support sustainable aviation fuel production.

Water (Special Measures) Bill:

• a bill to strengthen the powers of the water regulator to ensure water bosses face personal criminal liability for lawbreaking; and
• ban the payment of bonuses if environmental standards are not met.

Health, wellbeing and employment

Mental Health Bill:

• legislation to ensure mental health is given the same attention and focus as physical health;
• ensuring detention under the Mental Health Act only takes place when necessary, by further limiting the extent to which people with a learning disability and/or autistic people can be detained.

Draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill:

• this will enshrine in law the right to equal pay for ethnic minorities and disabled people.

Employment Rights Bill:

• this will legislate to introduce a new deal for working in first 100 days to ban exploitative practices and enhance employment rights;
• this will include banning zero-hour contracts, ending "Fire and Rehire" and "Fire and Replace", making parental leave, sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal available from day one on the job, strengthening Statutory Sick Pay, making flexible working the default, improving rights for new mothers, and new fair pay agreement for adult social care.

Pension schemes Bill:

• a broad pensions-based bill covering measures intended to help people get more from their retirement pots.

Safety and injustices

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill:

• this will require people responsible for certain premises and events to take steps to mitigate the impact of a terrorist attack; and
• reduce harm in the event of a terrorist attack occurring.

Hillsborough Law:

• legislation to introduce a duty of candour for public servants to prevent cover-ups after injustices like the Hillsborough tragedy and Post Office Horizon scandal.