Keir Starmer has pledged to “fix the foundations” of the country for the long-term by boosting economic growth with reforms to energy and planning in Labour’s first king’s speech in a decade and a half. The new prime minister said the government would require “patient work and serious solutions” to restore trust in British politics and rebuild the country, with 40 bills in the government’s new legislative programme. The plans would also help to counter the “snake oil charm of populism”, he told MPs, as his new administration grapples with how to respond to the rise of the populist right. Speaking to MPs, Starmer said his government would “turn the page on an era of politics as noisy performance and return it to public service and start the work of rebuilding our country”. He said the administration was already “finding new and unexpected marks of their chaos – scars of the past 14 years, where politics was put above the national interest, and decline deep in the marrow of our institutions”. But at the heart of his plans, he said, were measures to “take the brakes off” Britain and start to grow the economy, which he said were only the starting point for what he promised would be a lasting transformation. “The era of politics as performance and self-interest above service is over,” he told MPs. “The challenges we face require determined, patient work and serious solutions, rather than the temptation of the easy answer.” Almost immediately, ministers will publish a bill to nationalise troubled rail companies, bringing the franchises back into public ownership as the contracts expire, in an attempt to drive up performance and productivity. Within weeks, the government will begin radical reform of the planning system, after Starmer pledged his party would be “builders, not blockers”, overturning the previous government’s de facto ban on onshore windfarms. Local councils will have to adopt mandatory housing targets within months under new planning reforms, relaxed by the Conservatives last year amid pressure from backbenchers, and work together to identify regional infrastructure needs in an attempt to stop individual authorities blocking plans. A new employment rights bill has been promised to take effect within 100 days. It will ban zero-hours contracts unless an employee requests one, and most “fire and rehire” practices – although unions have complained that some aspects have been watered down after lobbying from business. It will grant workers rights such as maternity pay and sick pay from day one of their employment, making flexible working the default, and simplify the process of trade union recognition. Labour will also repeal the last government’s controversial anti-strike laws. A bill will be introduced to set up Great British Energy (GBE), another election pledge, with £8.3bn public money over the course of the parliament, defining for the first time in law that it will be an energy production company rather than solely an investment vehicle. There had been fears within the sector that Labour would row back on plans for GBE to develop and own assets. The company is expected to be headquartered in Scotland and will own, manage and operate clean power projects. The national wealth fund bill will set out one of the government’s main wealth-creating efforts, a £7.3bn capitalised fund to spread investment, while an English devolution bill will hand more powers to local decision-makers.
However, there will be other bills designed to make a material difference to people’s day-to-day lives, which No 10 hopes will help tackle the rise of rightwing populism and start to restore faith in politics. Starmer said of his programme: “It is a rejection, in this complicated and volatile world, of those who can only offer the easy answer, the snake oil charm of populism. As the past 14 years have shown, that road is a dead end for this country.” Bills include some interventionist public health and antisocial behaviour measures such as restrictions on the sale and flavours of vapes, a progressive total ban on tobacco smoking, bans on some junk food advertising, new “respect orders” aimed at persistent antisocial behaviour, and direct powers to tackle the use of noisy off-road bikes on streets. After an angry election debate over migration, the government will create a new Border Security Command and put stronger penalties in place for migrant smuggling gangs as part of the effort to curb crossing of the Channel. The government also confirmed it can stop a £100m payment to Rwanda for the scrapped deportation scheme. Yet one glaring omission in the king’s speech was a pledge to lift the deeply unpopular two-child benefit cap, despite intense pressure from Labour MPs. In an apparent attempt to keep the anger at bay, Liz Kendall, the welfare secretary, launched a new government taskforce to devise a child poverty strategy. There will, however, be a focus on children’s wellbeing with breakfast clubs for all primary schoolchildren, a limit on expensive school uniform items and new local authority registers to make sure fewer pupils slip under the radar when they are not in school. There was no detailed plan for adult social care, with Downing Street aides saying there was “no quick legislative fix” to tackle the crisis, but adding that a new fair pay agreement could help deal with staffing problems. Starmer has said that he wants to see a more robust approach to standards in public life, adding: “We are all responsible for the tone and standards that we set.” His plans for a new ethics and integrity commission do not require primary legislation to put in place. A new Hillsborough law will put a legal duty of candour on public servants and authorities, which the government said would address the “unacceptable defensive culture prevalent across too much of the public sector”. There is also a new law to put water companies into “special measures” to clean up rivers, lakes and seas, with bosses facing personal criminal liability for lawbreaking and a beefed-up regulator having the power to ban bonus payments if environmental standards are not met. Plans to end the “outdated and indefensible” presence of hereditary peers in the House of Lords have been introduced, but the retirement age of 80 has been delayed, along with votes for 16-year-olds, which is expected closer to the next election. There was also an overtly political bill from Labour – a duty to consult the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) before making substantial tax changes, which former prime minister Liz Truss failed to do before her disastrous mini-budget. Rishi Sunak, the Conservative leader, sought to push back against the government painting “as bleak a picture as possible” on its inheritance, adding that the economy was on an “upward trajectory”. He said the opposition would “hold the government to its own promises” not to raise taxes beyond their manifesto, adding that “it would be difficult for them to claim that things are worse than they thought and then renege on those pledges”.