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On 17 July 2024, Britain’s King Charles set out the UK Government’s legislative agenda for the forthcoming parliamentary session, promising a government of service focused on bringing economic stability, strengthening industry at home, tackling insecurity and injustice, and driving institutional reform.
Some of the 40 Bills reflect the policy priorities of the previous government, including the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, Martyn’s Law and the Renters’ Rights Bill. There are, though, new bills which are notable for the emerging risk landscape – including one designed to regulate new product risks from developing technologies, such as AI. This article seeks to give a high-level overview of the bills laid out in the King’s Speech that may potentially have the greatest impact on business and their insurers as they evolve throughout their legislative journey.
What was missing:
This was an ambitious King’s Speech, setting the groundwork for cementing Labour’s policy priorities as our new government. However, there were some expected bills that failed to be introduced as an immediate priority, including a commitment to lowering the voting age or measures to regulate the AI industry. Instead, the current focus is on data and cyber safety and we expect to see AI regulation and voters reform emerge at a later stage.
Developing AI responsibly is one of the most significant global issues of today. Therefore, some may be surprised not to see an explicit bill to regulate AI in the UK government’s plan. Business will need to continue monitoring the policy landscape for clues about when the legislation is ready to go.
What next?
As we head towards the summer recess, we will look to the Private Members’ Bill ballot on 5 September and Budget Day set to potentially take place on 18 September for further indication of the Government’s priorities as Ministers settle into their new roles and select committees are formalised.
Bills re-introduced:
As a result of the snap election, and the short wash-up period that ensued, not all priority bills were able to make it across the line and receive Royal Assent. As such, some bills introduced in the King’s Speech mirror those first introduced under the last government, which are outlined below.
- Implements the recommendations made in a 2022 Law Commission review of Arbitration Law.
- Key reforms include:
- clarifying the law applicable to arbitration agreements that do not arise from investor-state agreements; and
- providing that the law applicable will be those of the legal location chosen for arbitration unless parties expressly agree otherwise. - Codify a duty on arbitrators to disclose circumstances that might give rise to justifiable doubts about their impartiality, in line with international best practice.
- Empower courts to make orders in support of emergency arbitrators.
- Empower arbitrators to make awards on a summary basis.
- Similar to Data Protection and Digital Information Bill introduced to Parliament in July 2022.
- The following three uses of data will be placed on a statutory footing: (i) establishing Digital Verification Services (ii) developing a National Asset Register and (iii) setting up Smart Data schemes.
- Seeks to harness the benefits of data and digital services alongside the implementation of corresponding protections for personal data and privacy.
- Strengthen the ICO’s powers as the designated regulator, enforcing new data laws.
- Establishment of Digital Verification Services, a National Underground Asset Register and Smart Data schemes.
- The Bill will extend and apply UK-wide.
- First mentioned in the King’s Speech 2023 but failed to make it beyond Committee stage in the Commons before the pre-election dissolution of Parliament.
- Will once again seek to establish an Independent Football Regulator which will have three primary functions: to ensure financial stability across the English football leagues, to provide fans with a platform to comment on important decisions about their club, and to protect the heritage and culture of clubs.
- Seen as Labour’s version of the Renters Reform Bill, with a few additions to be enshrined in law.
- Will seek to abolish Section 21 ‘no fault evictions’ and create new ground for possession for landlords to reclaim their properties.
- Give tenants greater rights to keep pets whilst offering landlords the ability to request insurance to cover potential damage.
- Give tenants greater protections against discrimination because of benefits or having children.
- Strengthen local council enforcement powers to bring actions against landlords seen to drive bad practices.
- Previously referred to as Martyn’s Law in the 2023 King’s Speech.
- Owners and operators that fall within the scope of Duty will be required to take steps to mitigate risk and reduce harm in the event of a terrorist attack occurring.
- Measures will vary depending on the capacity of the premises or event.
- Smaller premises in the ‘standard tier’ would be required to notify the regulator of their premises and implement reasonably practicable procedural measures to keep the public safe.
- Originally introduced to Parliament during the 2023 King’s Speech but unable to make it through ‘wash-up’.
- Imposes limitations on the sale and marketing of vapes.
- Raises the age of sale of cigarettes by one year so that children born on or after 1 January 2009 will never be able to be legally sold cigarettes.
New Bills laid out in the King’s Speech:
- To enhance the UK’s resolution regime, providing the Bank of England with a more flexible toolkit to respond to bank failure.
- Strengthen protections for public funds, promoting financial stability, and supporting economic growth and competitiveness.
- This Bill will extend and apply UK-wide.
- Give the new Border Security Command and wider law enforcement the tools and powers they need to crack down on criminal gangs.
- Stronger penalties in place against a range of OIC and border criminality, including preparatory offences.
- Measures to fix the asylum system including making it more efficient and effective to ensure rules are properly enforced, ending hotel use, clearing the asylum backlog and ensuring fast-track returns for individuals coming from safe countries.
- This Bill will extend and apply UK-wide.
- Measures to rebuild neighbourhood policing by getting neighbourhood police and Police Community Support Officers back in local communities.
- Expand the powers of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary to deliver higher standards of policing.
- Introduce new Respect Orders to tackle persistent adult offenders.
- Make it a specific offence to assault a shopworker.
- Further measures to tackle violence against women and girls, ensuring the police can respond effectively to domestic abuse, rape and other sexual offences.
- This Bill will extend and apply to England and Wales.
- Will update and expand existing regulations on cyber security and empower regulators.
- Ensure greater protection of essential digital services and supply chains.
- Seeks to enhance British cyber security, particularly in relation to critical infrastructure and economic resilience.
- Will expand reporting requirements to address gaps in understanding cyber risks and build expertise in Government.
- This Bill will extend and apply UK-wide.
- Transform the Financial Reporting Council into a new regulator: the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority.
- This new regulator will seek to extend Public Interest Entity (PIE) status to the largest private companies.
- Removal of some rules on smaller PIEs.
- New powers to investigate and sanction company directors for serious failures in relation to their financial reporting and audit responsibilities.
- The draft Bill is expected to extend and apply UK-wide.
- Proposes new offences to target acts of conversion practices that are not captured by existing legislation.
- This Bill would not impact those providing medical care and support.
- Does not impact legitimate psychological support, treatment, or non-directive counselling.
- This Bill will extend and apply to England and Wales.
- Seeks to enshrine into law the full right to equal pay for ethnic minorities and disabled people, making it easier to bring forward unequal pay claims.
- Will introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for larger employers (those with 250+ employees) to help close the ethnicity and disability pay gaps.
- Likely to extend and apply to Great Britain.
- Within the last Parliamentary session, the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act was enacted into law. This draft Bill seeks to implement this Act so that leaseholders and freeholders can have more rights over their homes.
- Seeks to enact the remaining Law Commission recommendations to give leaseholders’ rights to extend their lease and buy their freehold.
- Will be paired with a consultation about how to approach the restricting of sales of new leasehold flats.
- This Bill will extend and apply to England and Wales.
- Designed to deliver the Government’s ‘New Deal for Working People’.
- Encourage greater job security through banning zero-hour contracts, ending both ‘Fire and Rehire’ and ‘Fire and Replace’ practices and strengthen Statutory Sick Pay.
- Ensure parental leave is accessible regardless of time in employment.
- Establish a new Single Enforcement Body, also known as a Fair Work Agency.
- Establish a Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector.
- Update trade union legislation so it is fit for a modern economy.
- This Bill applies to Great Britain.
- Deliver more firm devolution agreements, transferring more power out of Westminster into local communities.
- Enable local leaders to request 25 additional powers according to the framework.
- Put a standardised devolution framework into legislation to give local leaders greater powers over strategic planning, local transport networks, skills, and employment support.
- Majority of the measures in the Bill will extend to England and Wales and apply to England.
- Will establish Great British Energy (GBE), a publicly owned energy production company which will own, manage and operate clean power projects.
- Will include capitalisation of £8.3bn over Parliament.
- Granting of powers to the Secretary of State to provide Great British Energy with the financial backing needed for it to meet its aims.
- Seeks to improve transparency and accountability when failure in the provision and delivery of public services are the subject of public investigation and scrutiny, and seeks to reduce defensiveness in the public sector.
- Territorial extent and application are to be determined.
- Seeks to reform the Mental Health Act.
- Will ensure that detention and treatment under the Mental Health Act takes place only when necessary, by revising the detention criteria.
- Removes police stations and prisons as places of safety under the Mental Health Act.
- Supports offenders with severe mental health problems to access the care they need as quickly and early as possible.
- This Bill will extend and apply to England and Wales.
- To repeal and replace the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023.
- Will be considered following a set of consultations with all parties and communities in Northern Ireland to find a framework which works for all stakeholders.
- Will not repeal the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery but will aim to strengthen its independence.
- Territorial extent of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 is UK-wide and mostly applies in Northern Ireland.
- Bring rail services back into public ownership.
- Amends the Railways Act 1993 to allow operations to be transferred when the current National Rail Contracts with private operators expire at their end date or operators fail to meet their commitments.
- This Bill will extend and apply to Great Britain.
- Consolidation of Defined Contribution individual deferred small pension pots, enabling an individual’s deferred small pot to be automatically brought together into one place to maximise income in retirement.
- Introduce a standardised test that trust based defined contribution schemes will need to meet to demonstrate they deliver value.
- Require pension schemes to offer retirement products.
- Greater protection for members in closed legacy Defined Benefit scheme from the risk of losing part of their pension if their employer becomes insolvent.
- This Bill will extend and apply to Great Britain.
- Will make improvements to the planning system at a local level, modernising planning committees and increasing local planning authorities’ capacity to deliver an improved service.
- Simplify the consenting process for major infrastructure projects.
- Reform compulsory purchase compensation rules.
- Use development to fund nature recovery.
- Majority of the Bill is expected to extend and apply to England and Wales. Some measures may also extend and apply to Scotland.
- Provide regulatory stability and deliver more protection for consumers by responding to new product risks and opportunities to enable the UK to keep pace with technological advances, such as AI.
- Address emerging risks and challenges such as the fire risk associated with e-bikes and lithium-ion batteries.
- Identify new and growing business models in increasingly complex supply chains and ensure responsibilities are clear to suppliers including online marketplaces.
- Ensuring that the law can be updated to recognise new or updated EU product regulations.
- The Bill will extend and apply UK-wide.
- To transfer functions from IfATE to Skills England.
- Ensure training programmes are well designed and delivered to meet assessment skills needs.
- Skills England will identify the training for which the Growth and Skills levy will be accessible, ensure national and regional skills systems are meeting skills needs and are aligned.
- Develop a single picture of national and local skills needs through work with the industry, the MAC, unions and the Industrial Strategy Council.
- This Bill will extend to England and Wales and apply in England.
- To support sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production in the UK by providing revenue certainty to encourage investment in the construction of SAF plants.
- Builds upon the SAF mandate, which seeks to create demand for SAF by setting targets on fuel suppliers to use a proportion of SAF.
- This Bill will extend and apply UK-wide.
- Removes restriction on the activities of the Crown Estate, including by widening its investment powers and giving it the power to borrow from the Exchequer to invest.
- Greater investment in areas such as digital technologies to support offshore energy development and port infrastructure.
- Will also change the source of funding for expenses and salaries removing the need for these to be done through the Parliamentary Supply Estimates Process.
- Strengthen the powers of the Victims’ Commissioner and give greater justice to victims through requiring offenders attend their sentencing hearings.
- Restricting parental responsibility for child sex offenders.
- Implement restrictions on sex offenders changing their names.
- To tackle court backlogs, Associate Prosecutors would be allowed to work on appropriate cases.
- Territorial extent and application yet to be confirmed.
- Will seek to put water companies under special measures and strengthen regulation to restore rivers, lakes and seas to good health.
- The Bill will introduce new powers to bring automatic and severe fines.
- Boost accountability for water executives through a new ‘code of conduct’ for water companies.
- Majority of the measures will extend and apply UK-wide.
The final cohort of bills are those which, at first blush, will have little impact on the insurance industry or the sectors its serves but we list them for completeness:
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Armed Forces Commissioner Bill - a bill to introduce a statutory Armed Forces Commissioner and give them the powers they need to support and champion Armed Forced and their families. Better Buses Bill - a bill to grant new powers for local leaders to franchise bus services, as well as lifting the restriction on the creation of new publicly owned bus operators. Budget Responsibility Bill - a bill to introduce the fiscal lock to ensure any government making significant and permanent tax and spending changes will be subject to an independent assessment by the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR). Children’s Wellbeing Bill - a bill to raise standards in education and promote wellbeing. Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and international Committee of the Red Cross (Status) Bill - a bill to change the status of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to enable both organisations to be treated in a manner comparable to an international organisation of which the UK is a member. High Speed Rail (Crewe to Manchester) Bill - a bill to provide powers to construct rail infrastructure that is key to improving inter-regional and northern rail connectivity. Holocaust Memorial Bill - a bill to allow for the building of a holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria tower Gardens. House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill - a bill to modernise the constitution and remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the Lords. Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015 (Extension) Bill - a bill to support efforts to increase the number of female bishops in the Lords. National Wealth Fund Bill - a bill to make investments across the country and encourage private sector investment to deliver growth and a greener economy. Railways Bill - a bill to reform the rail sector, bringing together the management of the network and the delivery of passenger services into a single public body: Great British Railways (GBR). |
United Kingdom