Today we have the first King’s Speech in 70-ish years.
The spectacle, with all its eccentric and ancient traditions, opens the new session of Parliament. The speech sets out the legislation the Government hopes to introduce this year.
Those of liberal and progressive heart are not going to hear much that they like in today’s measure which is likely to be a horrible parade of culture war nasties and sops to the most right wing base.
So let’s talk about what we think a decent Government should be doing. What measures would you like to see to improve life in this country.
You aren’t allowed to choose PR, or, as I prefer to describe it, giving people the Parliament they ask for, or the regulation of letterboxes to make leafletting easier because they are so obvious.
Off the top of my head, I’d do the following:
- A Bill to nsure that benefits always rose at least by inflation and reflect the actual cost of meeting basic needs:
- The Rejoin the Single Market Bill as the best contribution we could make to increase our country’s prosperity
- A Bill that gives a whole load of protections to disabled people and ensures that public services, employers, transport companies, to name but a few, have to do more to make their bit of the world more accessible for disabled people. This would include a massive publicly funded expansion of British Sign Language.
- Upgrade Wendy Chamberlain’s Carer’s Leave Act, as she would want, to make the leave paid.
- Introduce a right to 4 weels’ a year respite care for carers
What would be top of your list?
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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27 Comments
Spotlighting and reforming of the wealthy favouring inequities of the tax system?
Classifying and calling us citizens instead of subjects?
A lot of the stuff I’d do is redirecting expenditure, which doesn’t need legislation so not relevant to the King’s Speech. But off the top of my head, a few less obvious ones that I think require legislation:
Reform the business rating system so that high street shops are no longer penalised compared to out-of-town/online businesses. Payment should be linked to environmental footprint.
Businesses that provide car parking must provide a proportionate amount of cycle parking. Levy put on free car parking, used for public transport/active travel improvements.
Abolish stamp duty and reform leasehold system.
Legislation to enable building of HS2 to Manchester and Crossrail2 in London
Simplify planning system major infrastructure projects
Responsibility for statutory social care to be moved from councils to NHS (which may then need some reform to prevent it becoming even more monolithic than it currently is)
Caron’s list is pretty good but I would add something on housing that means local authorities can build homes for rent so that over time the vast majority of people on council waiting lists can get a house to live in at an affordable rent.
I would also annonce plans to trial a Universal Basic Income with the aim of rolling it out nationwide.
Pay/payments to senior executives of the Bank of England, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to the Crown in inverse proportion to food bank use?
Agree with OP + raise income tax thresholds, expand free childcare, introduce a universal oyster card for young people with discounts on travel and essential items, accept more asylum seekers and set up a citizens commission on reforming politics.
And yes a whole raft of pro housing measures including review of green belt classification and fast track visas for tradespeople
Give every adult resident in this country the right to vote in all elections. “No taxation without representation” is still the right principle. Equally, we should end overseas voting except for those working or studying overseas who intend to return to the UK. Pensioners who retire to live in another country should lose their right to vote in UK elections while they remain resident overseas. To sweeten the pill I would also commit to raising the State Pension for those resident overseas in line with the State Pension in the UK.
I’m sure we could all write long wish lists but if I were to choose just one it would be for the UK to recognise Palestine as a sovereign state.
This doesn’t mean we would cease to recognise Israel but it would mean that we were taking a more even handed approach in the conflict.
Steve T. hits the nail on the head, I really don’t like being one of “my people”. I’m reminded of a visit to Brussels a good many years ago which happened to cover the “National Day” when the Monarch addresses the people on TV. We were in a big park which was celebrating the national holiday and there was a TV set up to give us the King’s speech. He addressed us in French with the words “Mes chers compatriotes ” – “My dear fellow-countrymen/citizens” and eventually went on to do it all again in Flemish. Now wouldn’t something like that be nice in Britain (perhaps with a word or two in Gaelic and Welsh)….
Plus closing loopholes for tax exiles and non doms, so that they can’t shovel money to offshore trusts in eg British Virgin Islands.
Plus reducing the Sovereign Grant by 20% for the lifetime of a Parliament, properly taxing the monies from the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster
Plus dealing with the scourge of gambling, binge drinking of alcohol and dealing with drug addiction.
Honestly, Lawrence Cox, in these dire times with multiple problems facing voters, your priority is taking the vote away from ex-pats, so they can vote nowhere.
Do you not realise that I like other ex-pats go on paying tax on income arising in the UK? Great: pay taxes in two countries. Vote nowhere. Very fair that.
Air conditioning grants for all homes.
Increase renewables, on-shore wind farms, tidal power etc.
Abolish ULEZ and road closure schemes where they are not wanted or supported by local communities.
Plant more trees and grass verges alongside busy roads. Protect green spaces from overdevelopment and protect tenant halls on council estates from development.
Bring back utilities, energy and railways into public ownership, part fund by increasing taxes for multinational companies.
Build more community hospitals to release pressures on A & E.
Increase neighbourhood policing and more resources and funding for the victims of crime and ASB.
I am happy to be a subject as life is about learning not just existing.
Well said, Steve Trevethan! I believe your two proposals can be combined. The answer can be found in UBI.
Briefly and simply, UBI should be in the hands of the Inland Revenue. The IR to pay UBI to every body — and then make
each recipient pay Income Tax on it, as a simple part of his or her taxable income. Even Father Christmas, with no other income at all, will pay IT on his UBI. At perhaps 10% ?
Everyone, then, will stand on an even footing with each of his or her adult compatriots, truly a citizen and not a subject.
Change the governing body of the Bank of England so that it represents a wider range of British citizens such as those who rely upon food banks?
Might we currently, effectively, have government of the people by the bankers for the finance industry?
Promotion of alternative renewable energy sources and measures to promote and facilitate local energy generation and sharing. Big push on solar power and retrofitting insulation for social housing and smaller private rented properties. Climate emergency!
@Chris Moore
So you think that ex-pats who live in countries like Monaco so they pay far less tax should have the right to vote in UK elections, but someone from, say, France who comes to London to work should have no vote. It’s pretty obvious to me who is making more of a commitment to the UK. Perhaps you should join your mates in the Tory party who want to remove the time limit on overseas voting because it is to their political advantage.
I would really like to see a properly worked out and clearly stated ‘big picture’ stance to give context to the many good suggestions made so far.
The most valuable resource is human skill and imagination, and we should run the economy accordingly – using every last scrap of the available talent. If we don’t, we can’t expect it to do well – it will be like a car engine running on only, say, 3 out of 4 cylinders. Under the Tories it’s running on about 2 out of 4 cylinders.
Top people will always do well; they know what will benefit them and their children and, as a group, are able to arrange things to their advantage. That contrasts with the bottom 25% or 50% or even 75%, who are not in control, so their needs tend to be unrecognised and hence unmet.
So, I suggest we should focus on things that will work for the bottom 10 – 20% of the ability range (in reality, many different abilities) and devise ways to provide ladders of opportunity for them to climb. If the system works for them, it will work for everyone; there will be a stronger economy and less need for benefits.
The big opportunity here is apprenticeships at all levels (but clearly delineated so everyone knows where they stand). This will also require a mechanism to correct the market failure know since (at least) Adam Smith’s time.
@ Lawrence: you are extremely poorly informed about the British diaspora.
There are around 4.5 million ex-pat Brits. About 3000 of those live in Monaco i.e about one in 1500 Brits ex-pats live in Monaco and conform to your stereotype.
Fellow Brits I know in Spain are: many teachers, two carpenters, a nurse, a restaurant owner, an electrician. Those I know in France are teachers, artisans and one waiter.
You are also extremely poorly informed about Lib Dem policy on votes for life for the diaspora. In both 2017 and 2019, this was in the manifesto and it continues to be party policy.
Finally, you have the line “about my mates in the Conservative party”. I have friends in all three main parties: most in the Labour party as it happens. Is this an issue for you?
The
No representation without taxation.
Like many ex-pats I continue to pay taxes to the UK government. I also pay taxes to the Spanish government.
However, I am not allowed to vote in national elections in either Spain or the UK.
So no taxation without representation.
I suggest you rapidly look at practice in other European countries…….
@Chris Moore
Why should we be dictated to by practice in other European countries? The UK is sovereign and can choose whom it wishes to enfranchise. Indeed the situation before Brexit where EU nationals in the UK could vote both in local elections and in European elections in the UK, but not in Parliamentary elections was always illogical. The Representation of the People Act 1983 allows all Commonwealth citizens and Republic of Ireland citizens the right to vote in parliamentary elections. Indeed, some Commonwealth countries like New Zealand allow all permanently-resident foreign nationals to vote – are you saying we should not follow their example?
@Laurence Cox: “Why should we be dictated to by practice in other European countries?”
Who said we should be “dictated to”? Not me. That’s your own invention.
But let me express myself with rhetorical inaccuracy like you for a moment, “Why should we be dictated to by practice in New Zealand?”
After all the UK is a sovereign country.
And also New Zealand allows lifetime voting for New Zealand citizens, provided they have lived for at least a year in a row in New Zealand post-18 and have visited the country in the last few years.
Fancy that, Lawrence.
As to “no representation without taxation”.
The thought that voters should be making a serious financial contribution to society to have the right to vote was prominent in the resistance to universal suffrage.
Bit surprised to see this anachronistic idea promoted here. A significant minority of Brits do not pay income tax and some never will. I don’t see why that should disqualify them from voting.
If indirect taxes are taxation enough, then this slogan would allow a wide suffrage again – possibly not universal – including all ex-pats who do tend to visit the UK a lot and of course casual tourists.
@Chris Moore
I note that you repeatedly mis-spell my name. As you also repeatedly mis-represent my arguments, this lack of attention to detail is hardly surprising. As you are, I assume, a long-term ex-pat, it is not surprising either that you lack knowledge of what is happening in the UK. I discovered, in responding to you, that parts of the UK already grant voting rights to all resident adults regardless of their nationality. First Wales and then Scotland in 2020 enabled all resident adults to vote in all elections including the Senedd and Scottish Parliament. Yet you oppose the UK as a whole doing this, while demanding the right to vote in a country that you chose to leave. That is nothing more than naked self-interest.
Well, first, sincerely sorry for misspelling your name, Laurence.
Secondly, at no point have I misrepresented your argument. You would need to justify that claim, not just make it.
Thirdly, I’m well aware of the voting rights in Scotland and Wales. I’m half-Scottish. And the same applies in the Spanish regions. Good they finally got round to it.
Fourthly, at no point have I given an opinion on votes for foreign residents in UK-wide elections. I’m not against the idea. it makes a lot of sense.
Fifthly, are you still in favour of the way New Zealand deals with voting rights or have you rowed back on that now?
I’m sorry you have such a poor opinion of ex-pats. Enlightened and progressive countries like New Zealand, and Spain and many others offer lifetime voting rights to ex-pats, because they understand the multiple ties of emigrants to their native country. They understand the benefit for the country of maintaining close relationships with the diaspora.
This is party policy too, for very good liberal reasons, and it’s a pity you are only able to understand the whole issue as one of my “naked self-interest”.
In reality, casting my vote in the constituency I used to live in will confer no benefit of any kind to myself. What exactly would that be?!
@Laurence: I would think one problem with your example of giving a French person living in London the right to vote in national elections is that that French person presumably retains the right to vote in French elections. Why should s/he get two votes while an British citizen living abroad may well have no votes? That’s totally unfair and runs against the principle of one person one vote. For that reason, I think any move to grant foreign residents voting rights really needs to be by reciprocal agreement with other countries, and based on the principle that people living abroad should be able to select either ONE country as the country they are committed to and wish to have the right to vote in. (Of course you could argue there is already a route to that, albeit one that does have some issues: If you are truly committed to living permanently in your adopted country, why not apply for citizenship?)
Having said all that, in terms of stuff to go in a King’s speech, this really has to be very, very, low down the list of priorities.