The King’s speech: Why does it matter for people and planet?
What is this? Staff at Global Action Plan watching a 2011 film starring Colin Firth again?
Well no, it’s the state opening of Parliament in which the head of state - the monarch; King Charles - reads out a to-do list of all the bits of legislation the government will attempt to pass in the coming Parliamentary session.
Hmm, fascinating. A man standing in an old building reading out a to-do list.
It’s not box office stuff, unlike the film, which literally is. But we’ve just elected a new government and it is attempting to hit the ground with the engine already fully revved up.
Keir Starmer, the new Prime Minister promised to ‘take the brakes off Britain’ with more than 35 new laws. Unfortunate vehicle-related metaphors aside, whatever you do; wherever you live; whoever you work for, something on today’s list will affect you. And there’s quite a lot for those of us that are here for the health of people and planet.
That sounds like bad news.
We hate to disappoint, but there’s some good news. Though some of the items on the list could be much more ambitious and there are some big things missing.
Go on then, talk me through your list. What do you want?
After years of delay, more than anything we want this government to move forward really fast on the climate and nature emergencies.
Because we run Clean Air Day and work with hundreds of councils and doctors and charities across the country to raise awareness of how pollution harms our health, we want this to include action to cut air pollution dramatically, most of which is caused by burning fossil fuels.
We also want to see a radical change in the school curriculum in England so that young people are ready for planet-saving action - we call this Generation Action.
In what we call online climate we want new laws to ban online surveillance advertising to stop social media frankly screwing the whole thing up by harming our kids’ mental health, allowing lies and fake news on the climate to spread across the internet and distracting us with cat videos (okay, we’re fine with the cat videos).
We also have growing concern about Artificial Intelligence (AI) - not only the energy and water use of new data centres, but also, like any new product, it should be demonstrably safe and its processes transparent and accountable, otherwise it will just turbocharge the existing harms of social media (and lead to deep fake cats).
What did you get?
It’s not all about us, but since you ask.
On climate, the new government is aiming for 100% clean power by 2030, which is very welcome as we need to power our homes and transport in the future using electricity. Gas is on borrowed time (plus Putin wants us to keep using it) so we need lots of new renewables fast.
The plan announced by the King to set up a new, public company called GB Energy to own and invest in clean power generation - which will be based in Scotland - is really welcome, though we need to see the detail.
On education, not only are we expecting a review of the English curriculum, which is welcome (though needs to be radical and not just tinkering), but the King announced a new Children’s Wellbeing Bill to help with young people’s mental health - this must address the effects of social media as well as empowering kids to have agency on issues of high anxiety, like climate change.
There’s also a move towards preventative health, including really welcome new laws banning junk food advertising, smoking and vaping and energy drinks for young people. We can’t help but think that, if you’re banning junk food advertising, you should also just ban all the online ads that are pushed at children when they’re on social media.
What didn’t you get?
On Clean Air I’m afraid the news isn’t so good. Before the election, Labour promised a Clean Air Act to accelerate progress towards the limits recommended by the World Health Organisation. But this wasn’t in their manifesto and it wasn’t in the King’s speech. This means we need to step up our efforts to campaign for clean air.
Some of the items in the speech will help - plans to allow councils to take bus services back under local public control and the re-nationalisation of rail should mean better, more frequent and hopefully cheaper public transport.
The King also announced new devolution and planning laws and these might create opportunities to get wood burning phased out in urban areas and to give local authorities new powers and resources to cut air pollution faster.
We would want to see measures on preventative health include clean air and more access to green space for everyone, but there isn’t legislation as such in this area, so we will need to press for policy changes.
On Online Climate, The King did announce a new ‘Digital Information and Smart Data Bill’ which was framed in the speech as being focussed on AI. There might be opportunities here to win more action on the internet’s core harmful business model and also (reflecting on the Water Bill in the speech), to raise concerns about AI’s huge environmental impact as well as to demand AI is a safe, transparent and accountable product.
This is starting to look like just a list, so please make anything else snappy.
Okay, but it is worth a shout out on devolution and workers’ rights.
A lot of decisions in the UK are taken in Westminster, a long way away from where their impact is felt. Giving more powers to mayors and local government is something Global Action Plan strongly supports.
On the face of it, you wouldn’t think workers’ rights has anything to do with people and planet, but at Global Action Plan we are strong believers that everyone in the economy should be treated with fairness and compassion - we think this links to people treating the planet better so it’s welcome.