King’s Speech 2024: Labour Government sets out legislative agenda, spanning planning reform, new devolution arrangements and data protection changes

July 17, 2024

Bills detailing major planning reforms, proposals for standardised devolution agreements, significant changes to employment rights, and data protection reforms are among a set of new legislation announced in the King’s Speech today (17 July).

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

The Bill 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.

Its main elements are:

streamlining the delivery process for critical infrastructure including accelerating upgrades to the national grid and boosting renewable energy, which will benefit local communities, unlock delivery of the Government’s 2030 clean power mission and net zero obligations, and secure domestic energy security. “We will simplify the consenting process for major infrastructure projects and enable relevant, new and improved National Policy Statements to come forward, establishing a review process that provides the opportunity for them to be updated every five years, giving increased certainty to developers and communities.”
further reforming compulsory purchase compensation rules to ensure that compensation paid to landowners is “fair but not excessive” where important social and physical infrastructure and affordable housing are being delivered. “The reforms will help unlock more sites for development, enabling more effective land assembly, and in doing so speeding up housebuilding and delivering more affordable housing, supporting the public interest.”
improving local planning decision making by modernising planning committees.
increasing local planning authorities’ capacity, to improve performance and decision making, providing a more predictable service to developers and investors.
using development to fund nature recovery where currently both are stalled, unlocking a win-win outcome for the economy and for nature. “Our commitment to the environment is unwavering, which is why the Government will work with nature delivery organisations, stakeholders and the sector over the summer to determine the best way forward.”

English Devolution Bill

This bill aims to establish a new framework for English devolution, moving power out of Westminster and back to local areas.

Its main elements are:

putting a more ambitious standardised devolution framework into legislation to give local leaders greater powers over the levers of local growth. This will include enhanced powers over strategic planning, local transport networks, skills, and employment support, enabling them to create jobs and improve living standards. “We will also introduce new powers and duties for local leaders to produce Local Growth Plans.”
making devolution the default setting, meaning places will be granted powers without the need to negotiate agreements where they meet the governance conditions. Local leaders will be able to formally request additional powers according to the framework and the Government will be required to consider the request and either devolve them or publicly explain their reasons for not doing so.
making it easier to provide devolved powers quickly to more areas through establishing a simpler process for creating new Combined and Combined County Authorities, to ensure that every part of England can rapidly benefit from devolution. The Bill will establish a legislative foundation upon which to widen and deepen devolution, with a weighting towards creating advanced mayoral settlements where there is the capacity and ambition to do so.
improving and unblocking local decision making through more effective governance arrangements, ensuring mayors and Combined Authorities can get on and deliver for their areas.
empowering local communities with a strong new ‘right to buy’ for valued community assets, such as empty shops, pubs and community spaces. This will help to revamp high streets and end the blight of empty premises.

National Wealth Fund Bill

The Government intends for the National Wealth Fund (NWF) to be central to its effort to deliver growth and a greener economy.

"Capitalised with an additional £7.3 billion, the NWF will make transformative investments across every part of the country - mobilising billions of pounds worth of additional private sector investment," the Government claimed.

Its main elements are:

it will directly invest in the priority sectors set out in the manifesto in every corner of the country. The NWF will work with local partners, including mayors, to bring together a finance and investment offer that supports the needs of local areas and catalyses growth in all corners of the country.
to ensure investments can start immediately, the Fund will deploy funding through the UK Infrastructure Bank, expanding its remit and providing an additional £7.3 billion to catalyse private investment at an even greater scale. It will aim to generate £3 of private sector investment for every £1 it invests.
the National Wealth Fund will simplify the UK’s fragmented landscape of support for businesses and investors, aligning critical institutions like the UK Infrastructure Bank and British Business Bank to create a step change in our ability to mobilise private capital in the industries of the future.

Employment Rights Bill

This bill is part of the Government's effort to 'Make Work Pay', which will involve creating a new partnership between business, trade unions and working people.

Its main elements are:

Banning zero-hour contracts, ensuring workers have a right to a contract that reflects the number of hours they regularly work and that all workers get reasonable notice of any changes in shift with proportionate compensation for any shifts cancelled or curtailed. This will end ‘one sided’ flexibility, ensuring all jobs provide a baseline level of security and predictability.
Ending the practice of ‘Fire and Rehire’ and ‘Fire and Replace’ by reforming the law to provide effective remedies and replacing the previous Government’s statutory code.
Making parental leave, sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal available from day 1 on the job for all workers.
Strengthening Statutory Sick Pay by removing the lower earnings limit to make it available to all workers as well as the waiting period.
Making flexible working the default from day-one for all workers, with employers required to accommodate this as far as is reasonable, to reflect the modern workplace.
Strengthening protections for new mothers by making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who has had a baby for six months after her return to work, except in specific circumstances.
Establishing a new Single Enforcement Body, also known as a Fair Work Agency, to strengthen enforcement of workplace rights.
Establishing a Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector and, following review, assess how and to what extent such agreements could benefit other sectors.
Reinstating the School Support Staff Negotiating Body, to establish national terms and conditions, career progression routes, and fair pay rates.
Updating trade union legislation so it is fit for a modern economy, removing restrictions on trade union activity – including the previous Government’s approach to minimum service levels – and ensuring industrial relations are based around good faith negotiation and bargaining.
Simplifying the process of statutory recognition and introduce a regulated route to ensure workers and union members have a reasonable right to access a union within workplaces.

Digital Information and Smart Data Bill

This bill will enable new uses of data to be safely developed and deployed and will make public services work better by reforming data sharing and standards. "It will also help scientists and researchers by improving our data laws, and ensure your data is well protected by giving the regulator (the ICO) new, stronger powers and a more modern structure."

Its main elements are:

The Bill will give a statutory footing to three innovative uses of data that people can choose to participate in and which will accelerate innovation, investment and productivity across the UK. This includes:
- establishing Digital Verification Services. These measures support the creation and adoption of secure and trusted digital identity products and services from certified providers to help with things like moving house, pre-employment checks, and buying age restricted goods and services.
- developing a National Underground Asset Register, a new digital map for installing, maintaining, operating and repairing pipes. “It gives planners and excavators standardised, secure, instant access to the data they need, when they need it, to carry out their work effectively and safely.”
- setting up Smart Data schemes, which are the secure sharing of a customer’s data upon their request, with authorised third-party providers.
The Bill will enable more and better digital public services. “By making changes to the Digital Economy Act we will help the Government share data about businesses that use public services. We will move to an electronic system for the registration of births and deaths. And we will apply information standards to IT suppliers in the health and social care system.”
The Bill will ensure data is well protected. “We are modernising and strengthening the ICO. It will be transformed into a more modern regulatory structure, with a CEO, board and chair. And it will have new, stronger powers. This will be accompanied by targeted reforms to some data laws that will maintain high standards of protection but where there is currently a lack of clarity impeding the safe development and deployment of some new technologies. We will also promote standards for digital identities around privacy, security and inclusion.”
The Bill also establishes a Data Preservation Process that coroners (and procurators fiscal in Scotland) can initiate when they decide it is necessary and appropriate to support their investigations into a child’s death. “This will help coroners get access to online information they need when investigating a child’s death.”

Children’s Wellbeing Bill

This bill aims to put children and their wellbeing at the centre of the education and children’s social care systems, and make changes so they are safe, healthy, happy and treated fairly.

The Bill will remove barriers to opportunity for children and their families by:
- keeping children safe, happy and rooted in their communities and schools by strengthening multi-agency child protection and safeguarding arrangements.
- requiring free breakfast clubs in every primary school to ensure that every child, no matter their circumstances, is well prepared for the school day and can achieve their full potential.
- introducing legislation to limit the number of branded items of uniform and PE kits that a school can require to bring down costs for parents and remove barriers from children accessing sport and other school activities.
The Bill will improve the education system by:
- creating a duty on local authorities to have and maintain Children Not in School registers, and provide support to home-educating parents. “These measures will ensure fewer children slip under the radar when they are not in school and more children reach their full potential through suitable education.”
- making changes to the legislation about regulating and inspecting independent schools, including by providing Ofsted stronger powers to investigate the offence of operating an unregistered independent school.
- making changes to enable serious teacher misconduct to be investigated, regardless of when the misconduct occurred, the setting the teacher is employed in, and how the misconduct is uncovered.
- requiring all schools to cooperate with the local authority on school admissions, SEND inclusion, and place planning, by giving local authorities greater powers to help them deliver their functions on school admissions and ensure admissions decisions account for the needs for communities.
- bringing multi-academy trusts into the inspection system, to make the system fairer and more transparent, and enable direct intervention when schools and trusts are not performing to the highest standards.

Renters’ Rights Bill

This bill sets out to overhaul the private rented sector and includes a commitment to scrap section 21 evictions and to implement ‘Awaab’s Law’.

Its main elements are:

abolishing Section 21 ‘no fault evictions’, removing the threat of arbitrary evictions and increasing tenant security and stability. New clear and expanded possession grounds will be introduced so landlords can reclaim their properties when they need to.
strengthening tenants’ rights and protections, "for example we will empower tenants to challenge rent increases designed to force them out by the backdoor" and introduce new laws to end the practice of rental bidding wars by landlords and letting agents.
giving tenants the right to request a pet, which landlords must consider and cannot unreasonably refuse. Landlords will be able to request insurance to cover potential damage from pets if needed.
applying a Decent Homes Standard to the private rented sector to ensure homes are safe, secure and hazard free – tackling the blight of poor-quality homes.
applying ‘Awaab’s Law’ to the sector, setting clear legal expectations about the timeframes within which landlords in the private rented sector must make homes safe where they contain serious hazards.
creating a digital private rented sector database to bring together key information for landlords, tenants, and councils. “Councils will be able to use the database to target enforcement where it is needed most.”
supporting quicker, cheaper resolution when there are disputes – preventing them escalating to costly court proceedings – with a new ombudsman service for the private rented sector that will provide fair, impartial and binding resolution, to both landlords and tenants and reducing the need to go to court.
making it illegal for landlords to discriminate against tenants in receipt of benefits or with children when choosing to let their property – so no family is discriminated against and denied a home when they need it.
strengthening local councils’ enforcement powers. “New investigatory powers will make it easier for councils to identify and fine unscrupulous landlords and drive bad actors out of the sector.”

Draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill

This bill intends to take bring the leasehold system to an end and reinvigorate commonhold by:

enacting remaining Law Commission recommendations to bolster leaseholders’ fundamental rights to extend their lease and buy their freehold (enfranchisement), and take over the freeholders building Management functions (Right to Manage).
reinvigorating commonhold by modernising the legal framework. We will also restrict the sale of new leasehold flats. The Government will consult on the best way to achieve this, so that generations to come will benefit from absolute homeownership.
tackling existing ground rents by regulating ground rents for existing leaseholders so they no longer face unregulated and unaffordable costs.
bringing the injustice of ‘fleecehold’ private estates and unfair costs to an end – the Government will consult on the best way to achieve this and implement new protections for homeowners on private estates in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024.
ending the injustice of forfeiture so that leaseholders are protected against losing savings they have in their home for potentially small unpaid debts.

Draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill

This bill will protect the full right to equal pay for ethnic minorities and disabled people and create mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting.

Its main elements are:

enshrining in law the full right to equal pay for ethnic minorities and disabled people, making it much easier for them to bring unequal pay claims. “Claimants currently face significant barriers when bringing pay discrimination claims on the grounds of ethnicity or disability. Enshrining in law the full right to equal pay for ethnic minorities as well as disabled people will make it easier for them to bring forward equal pay claims where they have been underpaid.”
introducing mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for larger employers (those with 250+ employees) to help close the ethnicity and disability pay gaps. Surfacing pay gaps will enable companies to constructively consider why they exist and how to tackle them.

Mental Health Bill

This bill mainly takes forward the majority of Professor Sir Simon Wessley’s 2017 recommendations for legislative reform and includes a wide range of changes to shift the balance of power from the system to the patient, putting service users at the centre of decisions about their own care, the Government said.

Its main elements are:

ensuring that detention and treatment under the Mental Health Act takes place only when necessary, by revising the detention criteria to ensure that people can only be detained if they pose a risk of serious harm either to themselves or to others, and where there is a reasonable prospect that treatment would have a therapeutic benefit.
further limiting the extent to which people with a learning disability and/or autistic people can be detained and treated under the Mental Health Act and supporting such individuals to live fulfilling lives in their community.
adding statutory weight to patients’ rights to be involved with planning for their care, and to make choices and refusals regarding the treatment they receive
strengthening and improving the statutory roles which protect and support those who are detained by introducing a new statutory role – the nominated person – who is chosen by the patient, to replace the nearest relative and extend access to Independent Mental Health Advocates to informal patients and introduce an opt-out system for formal patients.
removing police stations and prisons as places of safety under the Mental Health Act to ensure people experiencing a mental health crisis or with severe mental health needs are supported in the most appropriate setting.

Crime and Policing Bill

This Bill aims to “strengthen community policing, give the police greater powers to deal with anti social behaviour”.

It will include measures to:

rebuild neighbourhood policing. “Bring forward arrangements to get neighbourhood police and Police Community Support Officers back on the beat in local communities.”
deliver higher policing standards. Expand the powers of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services.
crackdown on anti social behaviour. Introduce new Respect Orders to tackle persistent adult offenders, fast-track Public Spaces Protection Orders to make it quicker and easier to clamp down on rapid escalations in street drinking, and new powers to tackle the dangerous and anti social use of off-road bikes. It will create a duty for local partners to co-operate to tackle anti social behaviour, with an anti social behaviour lead in every local authority area.
tackle retail crime. It will create a new specific offence of assaulting a shopworker and introduce stronger measures to tackle low level shoplifting.
tackle knife crime. It will ban ninja swords and other lethal blades, and introduce strict sanctions on senior executives of online companies who fail to operate within the law. It will also “prevent young people being drawn into crime and criminal gangs by strengthening the law to tackle those who exploit children for criminal purposes, and create arrangements for local Young Futures prevention partnerships to bring together services to support at-risk teenagers”.
provide a stronger, specialist response to violence against women and girls. It will “ensure the police have the capability to respond robustly to domestic abuse, rape and other sexual offences, and strengthen the law to improve the police response to spiking”.

Cyber Security and Resilience Bill

This bill intends to strengthen defences and ensure that more essential digital services are protected, for example by expanding the remit of the existing regulation, putting regulators on a stronger footing, and increasing reporting requirements to build a better picture in government of cyber threats.

Its main elements are:

expanding the remit of the regulation to protect more digital services and supply chains. These are an increasingly attractive threat vector for attackers. This Bill will fill an immediate gap in our defences and prevent similar attacks experienced by critical public services in the UK, such as the recent ransomware attack impacting London hospitals.
putting regulators on a strong footing to ensure essential cyber safety measures are being implemented. This would include potential cost recovery mechanisms to provide resources to regulators and providing powers to proactively investigate potential vulnerabilities.
mandating increased incident reporting to give government better data on cyber attacks, including where a company has been held to ransom – this will improve our understanding of the threats and alert us to potential attacks by expanding the type and nature of incidents that regulated entities must report.

Better Buses Bill

This bill reflects the Government's manifesto commitment to reform the bus system by delivering new powers for local leaders to franchise local bus services and lifting the restriction on the creation of new publicly owned bus operators.

Its main elements are:

allowing every community to take back control of their buses by removing barriers that currently limit bus franchising powers only to metro mayors.
accelerating the bus franchising process by supporting local leaders to deliver better buses, faster.
supporting public ownership by removing the ban on publicly owned bus companies and building on the success of award-winning public bus services still in operation.
stepping in to safeguard local bus networks by providing more accountability over bus operators and ensuring standards are raised wherever you live across the country.
empowering local transport authorities and reforming funding by giving local leaders more control and flexibility over bus funding and allowing them to plan ahead to deliver their local transport priorities.

Hillsborough Law

This bill sets out a legal duty of candour on public servants and authorities and is aimed at addressing the “unacceptable defensive culture prevalent across too much of the public sector - highlighted by recent reports such as Bishop James Jones’s report into the experiences of the Hillsborough families and the recent Infected Blood Inquiry report. It is part out our wider efforts to create a politics of public service,” the Government said.

Its main elements are:

improving transparency and accountability where failure in the provision and delivery of public services is the subject of public investigation and scrutiny.
reducing the culture of defensiveness in the public sector.
helping ensure that the lack of candour uncovered in recent reports is not repeated, such as in the case of the Hillsborough and Infected Blood Inquiries.

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

This bill implements Martyn’s Law, which seeks to strengthen the security of public events and venues by requiring those 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.

Its main elements are:

smaller premises in the ‘standard tier’ will be required to notify the regulator of their premises and put in place reasonably practicable procedural measures to keep the public safe. Some measures could be as simple as educating staff on locking doors and evacuation procedures.
the requirements for organisations at these smaller premises will be focused on simple, low-cost activities surrounding policies and procedures.
those responsible for larger ‘enhanced tier’ premises and certain public events will be required to put in place counter terrorism measures that could be expected to reduce, so far as reasonably practicable, both the risk from an attack occurring at the premises or event as well as the risk of physical harm being caused if an attack was to occur.

Arbitration Bill

This bill aims to support more efficient dispute resolution, attract international legal business, and promote UK economic growth. It mainly involves enacting recent Law Commission recommendations to reform
arbitration law.

Its main elements are:

Clarifying the law applicable to arbitration agreements that do not arise from investor-state agreements, providing that the law applicable will be those of the legal location chosen for arbitration unless parties expressly agree otherwise. This will ensure that, where arbitration is seated in England and Wales, or Northern Ireland, it will be fully supported by our arbitration law which is among the most supportive of arbitration globally.
Codifying a duty on arbitrators to disclose circumstances that might give rise to justifiable doubts about their impartiality, in line with international best practice.
Strengthening arbitrator immunity against liability for resignations and applications for removal, supporting arbitrators to make robust and impartial decisions without fear of being sued by a disappointed party.
Empowering arbitrators to make awards on a summary basis on issues that have no real prospect of success, avoiding nuisance claims and making arbitrations more efficient.
Empowering courts to make orders in support of emergency arbitrators so they have the same routes to enforce their orders as other arbitrators.
Revising the framework for challenges where the challenge alleges that the arbitral tribunal lacked jurisdiction.

Source: King's Speech 2024: background briefing notes

Adam Carey