AN EMPHASIS on improving the economy characterised the King’s Speech on Wednesday, after the Prime Minister had said: “Now is the time to take the brakes off Britain. . . I am determined to create wealth for people up and down the country. It is the only way our country can progress.”
“Stability will be the cornerstone of my Government’s economic policy,” the King said.
The Office for Budget Responsibility will independently assess proposed tax and spending changes.
The new Government has faced pressure from campaigners and senior figures in the Labour Party to cut the two-child limit for Universal Credit. On Tuesday, the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, confirmed that the Government would not pledge to remove the benefits cap, though admitting that “people are frustrated” by the decision.
“Growth is imperative to us, so that we can afford to spend on making sure we can lift children out of poverty,” she said in an interview on BBC Breakfast. She said that the Government was going to be reviewing Universal Credit.
On Wednesday, the chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, Alison Garnham, said: “The new Government pledged an ambitious approach to tackling child poverty, but there was little to help achieve that aim in the speech today.
“The two-child limit is the biggest driver of rising child poverty, and teachers, struggling parents, and even children themselves can testify to the harm the policy is causing to kids, day in, day out.”
Bishops in the House of Lords have united in calling for the policy to be scrapped. In May, the Archbishop of Canterbury described the two-child cap as “cruel” (News, 24 May).
The Government’s stated priorities regarding the NHS are to reduce waiting times, improve preventative care, and to bolster mental-health provision for younger people. Mental health, the speech said, should be “given the same attention and focus as physical health”.
The ecumenical ChurchWorks Commission welcomed the move. The organisation’s chair, the Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Philip Mounstephen, said that the King’s Speech contained “encouraging signs that the new Government will be ambitious in tackling key issues facing people across the country. . .
“The Prime Minister has said that there will be no decade of national renewal in this country without the active participation of the Church. ChurchWorks stands ready to help unlock the potential of churches across the country to play their part in that shared mission,” Bishop Mounstephen said.
ChurchWorks’ director, Jack Palmer-White, sounded a note of caution about provision to tackle child poverty. “The continuing lack of clarity around the future of Family Hubs is concerning,” he said, and urged the Government to “address the uncertainty that local authorities are facing, and commit to working with voluntary, community and faith organisations to support all children and families.”
Shortly after the King’s Speech, Downing Street announced the creation of a Child Poverty Taskforce, to be led by Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, and the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson.
THE King’s Speech contained a pledge to “get Britain building”, with the promise of a Planning and Infrastructure Bill to “accelerate the delivery of high-quality infrastructure and housing”.
The Church of England has been increasingly involved in conversations about housing. The lead bishop for housing, the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, last year advocated a long-term housing strategy (News, 22 September 2023). In 2021, the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community, in its report, Coming Home, called for a 20-year programme to improve the quality and affordability of the nation’s housing stock, agreed by all parties and thus immune to changing political fortunes, and including a redefinition of “affordability” and a review of the rental sector (News, 21 February 2021).
Foreign-policy positions were also outlined in the speech, including an “unshakeable” commitment to NATO and “full support” for Ukraine, and a two-state solution in the Middle East consisting of “a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state”.
A LONG-EXPECTED ban on conversion therapy looks set to be introduced, after legislation stalled under the previous government (News, 22 September 2023). A Private Member’s Bill received qualified support from bishops in the House of Lords (News, 16 February), but lapsed when Parliament was dissolved for the General Election.
The Christian Institute, a conservative Evangelical charity, responded to the inclusion of a ban in the King’s Speech by suggesting that it would infringe civil liberties. The charity’s deputy director, Simon Calvert, said that there were “multiple risks to the human rights of innocent parents, pastors and professionals”.
Other Christian groups welcomed the policy announcement. The chair of Ban Conversion Therapy, the former General Synod member Jayne Ozanne, said she looked forward to working on a “ban with no loopholes”.
Another policy introduced after a concerted campaign is for public servants to be legally bound by a “duty of candour”. It was recommended by the former Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Revd James Jones, in his report on the Hillsborough disaster (News, 3 November 2017).
Last year, the Conservative Government released its response to Bishop Jones’s report, which introduced a charter but stopped short of legislation requiring that the public interest put before reputation (News, 8 December 2023).
Legislation to create several new public bodies was mentioned in the speech, including for Great British Railways, which will take train operators into public ownership, and GB Energy, a state-owned energy company to be located in Scotland.
Further devolution will also be introduced, with a new Council of the Nations and Regions to facilitate collaboration between various levels of regional and national government.
New powers for metro mayors and combined authorities will be brought in as part of an attempt to “support local growth plans that bring economic benefit to communities”, including a Bill to enable local authorities to take control of bus services.
House of Lords reform is also part of the Government’s agenda, though seemingly in a watered-down form. In 2022, a Labour Party report written by a former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, suggested that the House of Lords be replaced with a smaller, elected second chamber (News, 9 December 2022; Comment, 9 December 2022).
No such plan was laid out in the King’s Speech, which instead included a statement of intent to remove the remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords.
Legislation introduced in 2015 which means that newly appointed women bishops are fast-tracked into one of the 26 seats reserved for bishops in the House of Lords is to be renewed.
The Bishop of St Albans, Dr Alan Smith, who is the convener of the Lords Spiritual, said: “Colleagues in the Lords and on the Bishops’ benches have really benefited from the excellent contributions of our senior female colleagues in the time this Act has been in place, and I’m glad that will continue for another five years.”