Queen's Speech - where's the beef?

As I expected, the Queen's Speech was a bit of a damp squib. There are various measures in there that are worthy in so far as they go but many of them will not see the light of day on the statute books as there is just not enough time.

The most astonishing measure for me is the "Fiscal Responsibility Bill" which will put into law the promise to halve the defecit within a set timeframe. I have just been listening to John Healey, government minister on Radio 5 Live try to defend this measure and he did not do a good job. The question was repeatedly asked, why do the government need to bring in a law to make sure they do what they have already promised to do? Mr Healey did not have a good answer. It strikes me that the government are using legislation as a way to try to send out "messages" to the markets that they will be responsible. If they have to use the Queen's Speech to do this then it speaks very ill of their reputation. They are basically saying that they understand they might not be trusted and they have regularly moved the goalposts in the past so they are going to put a legislative lock on themselves. It is not clear what the penalty would be if they were to fail to halve the defecit and hence at the moment it is not worth the paper it is written on.

Another measure that made me raise my eyebrows is the one that "gives" parents the right to demand certain standards from their schools. The thing is, as Mr Healey talked through what the mechanism for that would be it became more and more clear that the mechanisms already exist for parents to appeal to various authorities to get the required standards including the Head, the Governors, the LEA etc. As far as I can tell this measure does nothing. It just seems to be a way of looking like they are doing something.

The big omission from all of this of course are substantial plans to deal with the reform of parliament in the wake of the expenses scandal. Callers and commenters to the Radio 5 Live show I was listening to were incredulous that in the Queen's Speech directly following the parliamentary session which has had the worst crisis in confidence for MPs in living memory there was nothing to address this in the Queen's Speech and I expect that feeling will be widespread. This shows just how out of touch this government has become that they didn't even consider it necessary to tackle any aspect of the rotten system in its final legislative programme before the election.