My Queen’s Speech: a radical programme for the UK

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Tomorrow is Queen's Speech day. No government that might have been elected would have presented the programme I would wish for. These would have been my priority bills:

A National Infrastructure Act

A bill to provide finance of £50 billion a year for five years to:

  • Build 100,000 new social houses a year.
  • Provide pump priming funding to enable another 100,000 new house starts a year.
  • Begin a programme of extensive insulation of UK properties and the installation of renewable energy generating capacity.
  • Provide core funding for research and development funding for UK green business.
  • To authorise the Bank of England to finance this programme using its quantitative easing programme.

A PFI Replacement Act

To authorise the repurchase of PFI contracts using the quantitative easing programme

A Tax Dodging Act

To:

An NHS Reform Act

To:

  • Recreate the statutory duty to provide health care.
  • Create a legislative requirement that NHS providers have a statutory right to be preferred bidders in NHS contracting.
  • Create regional health authorities in the UK to replace all CCGs in their area and to remove the division between primary, secondary, tertiary and social care by the provision of integrated health care.
  • Provide a right of access to healthcare seven days a week, but not necessarily with a named provider at a specific location.

A Constitutional Reform Act

To pave the way:

  • To greater devolution of powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
  • To create regional government in England.
  • To reform local government in England as consequence, replacing county councils to prevent proliferation of tiers of authorities.
  • To increase the powers available to parish councils to encourage bottom up local government.
  • To replace the House of Lords with an elected Senate.
  • To plan the integrated devolution of taxing powers to these authorities whilst maintaining the principle of redistribution between regions and areas to maintain social justice.
  • To reduce the voting age to 16.

A Railways Nationalisation Act

To require that all rail franchises return to state control on the first occasion when this is contractually possible and whenever standards of service supply fall below required contractual levels.

A Social Security Emergency Reform Act

To:

  • Abolish the Bedroom Tax.
  • Reform the social security sanctioning process.
  • Review and reform the delivery of Universal Credit.

An Education Reform Act

To:

  • Require that Free Schools deliver the national curriculum
  • Require that all teachers be qualified
  • Require the abolition of all entry conditions to state funded schools on the grounds of faith or attendance at places of religious worship
  • Remove the charitable status of fee paying schools
  • Restore balance in the national curriculum to include an appropriate focus on arts, drama and music education.
  • Require mandatory education in basic economics, taxation, budgeting, debt, credit and banking.

A Right to Reside Act

A Bill to:

  • Confirm the UK's international commitments on migration given to the EU and the UK's commitment to accept those in need of refuge.
  • Limit the right to claim benefits upon taking up residence in the UK except during periods when asylum was being sought or after it had been granted.
  • To remove the right for any employment to be advertised solely to those not normally resident in the UK.
  • To require that UK minimum wage, national insurance and income tax legislation apply without limit to all engaged in the UK wherever their employer might be.
  • To provide the resources necessary to enforce this legislation.
  • To abolish the domicile rule but to create a right to be treated as being a short term resident in the UK for tax purposes for one period not exceeding four years in duration and not to be available more than once every ten years to any one person during which period they would only be taxable on UK source income and worldwide income remitted to the UK.

A Companies Act

To:

  • Require that all UK limited companies be required to file the accounts that they supply to their shareholders on public record each year
  • To require that all UK companies be required to submit a corporation tax return each year, without exception
  • To make the directors and shareholders owning more than 10% of the shares in a company personally liable for all penalties due for failure to file accounts or tax returns as required by law and personally liable for any taxes unpaid more than three months after its due date
  • To require that a UK parent company file the accounts of all its subsidiary companies on public record in the UK of they are not available for public inspection for a fee of no more than £5 on another public registry accessible on line somewhere in the world
  • To require that the parent company of a foreign owned UK group be required to file consolidated accounts for its group in the UK, and that it reveal all its UK associated companies when doing so
  • To require that all UK licenced banks supply details of the beneficial ownership of all companies to which they supply banking services to HMRC and Companies House annually and that this information be made available on public record for comparison with the data supplied by the companies themselves
  • To require that no company be struck from the Register of Companies until it can be shown that it has settled all its tax liabilities or is unable to do so through insolvency from which the directors or shareholders have not personally gained.

An Environment Act

To provide the Uk with the powers to implement the recommendations of the Paris climate change summit to be held in 2015.

A Banking Reform Act

To implement the reforms detailed here.

A Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories Act

To require that the UK's Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories require that the accounts and the beneficial ownership of all the companies that they incorporate be recorded on readily accessible public record.

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Some issues that need attention are not in this list: I apologise. That's prioritisation. No doubt you will let me know if I got it wrong.


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