QUEENS SPEECH 2022: KEY POINTS AT-A-GLANCE
The Queen’s speech highlights some of the 38 laws that ministers intend to pass in the coming year including bills carried from previous sessions of parliament..
This number includes some bills carried over from the previous session of Parliament, which ended last month.
It also includes a number of bills included in past Queen’s Speeches.
Here is a summary of the main points:
A Levelling up and Regeneration Bill will give councils new planning powers, including to force landlords in England to let out empty shops to rejuvenate high streets
A Harbours (Seafarers’ Remuneration) Bill will give British ports powers to refuse ferry services that do not pay their crews the national minimum wage, after a row over P&O Ferries
A new state-run agency to regulate railway services across the UK, Great British Railways, will be established by a Transport Bill
Changes to business rates, the property tax paid by companies, will be introduced via a Non-Domestic Rating Bill
There will be new legislation to set up the UK Infrastructure Bank, a body designed to increase financing of infrastructure projects
New powers to build and operate the next stage of the HS2 high-speed rail line are contained in the High Speed Rail (Crewe-Manchester) Bill
Digital and media
The Online Safety Bill is a mammoth piece of legislation to deliver a government pledge to better regulate content appearing on the internet
A new Media Bill will enable the planned privatisation of Channel 4, and allow Ofcom to regulate on-demand streaming services
A Data Reform Bill will replace EU rules on data protection
The Electronic Trade Documents Bill will enable greater digitisation of trade-related paperwork
The Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill will extend 5G mobile coverage and introduce new safety standards for digital devices
A draft Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill will aim to tackle fake consumer reviews and boost competition between social media firms
Security and justice
A Public Order Bill will introduce new police powers over disruptive protests, which were blocked by the House of Lords earlier this year
The National Security Bill will give new powers to the security services and overhaul the UK’s laws protecting official secrets
A draft Victims’ Bill will implement a long-promised pledge to create new rights for the victims of crime
Legal duties to consider the risk of terror attacks in public places will be created by a draft Protect Duty Bill
Brexit and the constitution
A Brexit Freedoms Bill will give ministers new powers to overhaul EU laws they copied over after the UK left the EU
A new Bill of Rights will deliver a longstanding Tory pledge to replace provisions in the Human Rights Act
The speech contains a reference to protecting the Good Friday Agreement, but did not mention specific legislation to give ministers new powers to rip up the Northern Ireland Protocol
However, the BBC understands a bill could be introduced at a later stage
Education and schools
A new Schools Bill will give the schools regulator powers to crack down on unregistered schools in England, and introduce attendance registers
The Higher Education Bill will deliver a pledge to make loans available to students at any stage in their lives
The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill will place new legal duties on English universities to ensure free speech on campus
A Conversion Therapy Bill will ban conversion therapy for gay or bisexual people
It will not cover transgender people, with ministers concerned about unintended consequences for parents, teachers and therapists
Climate, Environment and Energy
An Energy Security Bill will contain new powers aimed at boosting renewable energy, and promote a market in electric heat pumps
An Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill will introduce new animal welfare standards and new powers to tackle puppy smuggling
However the long-mooted Animals Abroad Bill to implement a ban on importing hunting trophies is not included
The bill was previously due to include a ban on imports of fur and foie gras, but this plan faced cabinet opposition
The Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill will relax the regulation of gene-edited crops
Finance and regulation
An Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill will beef up the investigatory powers of Companies House and aim to increase corporate transparency
The Procurement Bill will replace EU rules on how the government buys services from the private sector
The Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions Bill will stop public bodies imposing their own boycotts on foreign countries
The government will aim to increase completion among auditors and improve financial reporting in a draft Audit Reform Bill
Ministers say a Financial Services and Markets Bill will aim to simplify EU rules governing the sector
A Modern Slavery Bill will force companies with an annual turnover of more than £36m to publish a statement every year on the steps they are taking to prevent modern slavery among their suppliers
Housing
A Social Housing Regulation Bill will increase regulation of the social housing sector and give tenants new rights to information
The Renters Reform Bill would deliver a Tory manifesto commitment to end so-called “no fault” evictions after tenancies end
What else was in the speech?
A draft Mental Health Bill to overhaul the mental health system in England and Wales
A Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill will place restrictions on future prosecutions of British soldiers and give families new rights to information about Troubles-related deaths
A Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill will create powers to implement trade deals with those two countries
A Social Security Bill will aim to streamline the process for people claiming certain benefits towards the end of their lives
An Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Bill will provide official recognition in law to the Irish Language in Northern Ireland
Schools Bill-Queens Speech
“Reforms to education will help every child fulfil their potential wherever they live, raising standards and improving the quality of schools and higher education.”
The purpose of the Bill is to:
- Level up opportunity by delivering a stronger and more highly performing school system that works for every child, regardless of where they live.
The main benefits of the Bill would be:
- Supporting school to be part of a family of schools in a strong trust to level up school standards and thus enable all children to achieve their potential wherever they live and whatever their background. This will support the ambition that by 2030, 90 per cent of primary school children will achieve the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, and the percentage of children meeting the expected standard in the worst performing areas will have increased by a third.
- Ensuring that funding is allocated on a fair and consistent basis for all schools wherever they are so all schools deliver world class outcomes for their pupils.
- Strengthening the school attendance regime so children can benefit from being in school.
- Providing the tools to improve safeguarding for children wherever they are educated, including through ‘children not in school’ registers.
The main elements of the Bill are:
- Strengthening the regulatory framework for academy trusts and establishing new statutory standards to drive clarity and consistency of expectations for academy trusts, underpinned by intervention powers to ensure action can be taken to tackle serious failure if it occurs.
- Supporting more schools to become academies in strong trusts by removing barriers to conversion for faith schools and grammar schools and bringing schools into the academy sector where this is requested by local authorities.
- Enabling better, more targeted, and more consistent multi-agency support to the children and families who need it most across England by making necessary reforms to the attendance legal framework. The Bill will require schools to publish an attendance policy and will put attendance guidance on a statutory footing, making roles and responsibilities clearer.
- Implementing a direct National Funding Formula, so that each mainstream school will be allocated funding on the same basis, wherever it is in the country, and every child will be given the same opportunities, based on a consistent assessment of their needs.
- Establishing ‘children not in school’ registers, as well as creating a duty on local authorities to provide support to home educating families. This will provide accurate data to help identify children who are not receiving a safe or suitable full-time education, and to enable support to be offered to interested parents of registered children.
- Improving safeguarding by expanding registration requirements for independent educational institutions, enhancing enforcement, and working with Ofsted to expand investigatory powers.
- Strengthening the current teacher misconduct regime to include more educational institutions and increasing powers to investigate individuals who commit misconduct and enact appropriate regulatory discipline procedures.
Territorial extent and application
- The Bill will extend to England and Wales and apply to England only.
Key facts (acc Downing Street)
Standards and academies
- The proportion of schools rated Good or Outstanding by Ofsted has increased by 18 percentage points from 2010.
- More than seven out of ten sponsored academies are now rated as Good or Outstanding compared to about one in ten of the local authority-maintained schools that they replaced.
- Over 434,000 children are now being educated in Good and Outstanding academies which have improved since they joined strong trusts. Supporting more schools to become academies will enable more children to benefit from the advantages of strong trusts.
Funding
- Currently, funding levels can vary significantly between individual schools simply because of where they are located. For example, the funding for a small, rural primary school can vary by £100,000 depending on where it is in the country. The funding for a large, deprived secondary school can vary by £1.25 million.
Attendance
- Pupils’ attainment, wellbeing, and wider development are secured by good mattendance. By the end of Key Stage 2, pupils with no absences are 1.3 times more likely to achieve level four or above in reading and maths tests, and 3.1 times more likely to achieve level five or above, than pupils who missed ten to 15 per cent of all sessions.
- Prior to the pandemic, pupil absence fell substantially. From 2009-10 to 2018-19, the fall was from 6.0 per cent to 4.7 per cent of school sessions, representing around 15 million more days in school. Despite this, the prevalence of persistent absenteeism (even prior to COVID-19) was unacceptably high, with one in nine pupils missing more than ten per cent of possible sessions in 2018-19.
Children not in school
- It is estimated that there were more than 115,000 children who were home educated at some point during the 2020-21 academic year, which is an increase of 34 per cent on the previous year. Local authorities need accurate data to identify children in their areas who are not receiving a safe or efficient full-time suitable education, and also to offer support to interested parents of home educated children
Higher Education Bill-Queens Speech
“Reforms to education will help every child fulfil their potential wherever they live, raising standards and improving the quality of schools and higher education.”
The purpose of the Bill is to:
- Ensure that our post-18 education system promotes real social mobility, helping students onto pathways in which they can excel, and is financially sustainable. This will help support people get the skills they need to meet their career aspirations and to help grow the economy.
The main benefits of the Bill would be:
- Ensuring people are supported to get the skills they need throughout their life.
The Bill will enable the introduction of the Lifelong Loan Entitlement, a new and flexible way of providing loan support for post-18 study. This will provide individuals with a loan entitlement equivalent to four years of post-18 education (£37,000 in today’s fees) that they can use over their lifetime for a wider range of studies, including shorter and technical courses.
- Fulfilling the manifesto commitment to tackle uncontrolled growth of low-quality courses
Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill
The purpose of the Bill is to:
- Fulfil the Government’s manifesto commitment to strengthen academic freedom and free speech in universities in England.
The main benefits of the Bill would be:
- Ensuring that universities in England are places where freedom of speech can thrive for all staff, students and visiting speakers, contributing to a culture of open and robust intellectual debate.
- Ensuring that, for the first time, students’ unions will have to take steps to secure lawful freedom of speech for their members and others, including visiting speakers.
- Ensuring that academic staff feel safe to question and test received wisdom and put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions without risking their careers.
- Creating routes for staff, students and visiting speakers to seek redress if they suffer a loss as a result of specified duties being breached.