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Topic for May 2022 - The Queen's Speech
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Our discussion for May is the Queen’s Speech with focus on the Cost of Living aspects, as to discuss all 38 Bills would stretch even our debating skills.
Agenda
- Reactions to content and scope of Queen’s Speech. Are these the priorities for the country and are there any major omissions? Does it represent a coherent vision for the country?
- Addressing the cost of living
- How bad a situation are we in? What are the issues?
- Growing the economy – will it work? Are Government plans sufficient?
- Bringing inflation back to 2%. How long will it take? Are there lessons from the 1970s and early 80s?
- Other ways Government could/should be addressing the cost of living
- The Energy Security Bill
Background information
The four sections of the Queens Speech are:
- Grow and strengthen the economy and help ease the cost of living for families – the immediate priority
- Make streets safer by cutting crime and ensuring the police and security services have the powers they need
- Funding NHS to clear Covid backlog
- Providing leadership needed in challenging times (Ukraine, Foreign Affairs etc)
The document Queen's Speech 2022: background briefing notes - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) offers quite a lot of detail. It’s 140 pages long, so we don’t suggest you read it all! However, it’s worth reading pages 7-13 (The Speech itself and Exec Summary, or even just one of these) and also worth browsing the contents, which lists the 38 Bills. If you want to go one step further just browse the purpose at the beginning of each Bill description.
You might also be interested to listen to Parliamentlive.tv - Treasury Committee when the Governor of the B of E and members of the MPC appeared before it to be grilled over inflation. If you’ve never listened to one of the many committee meetings this is well worth dipping into to get a view of democracy in action.
This post was edited by # Probably42 at May 20, 2022 10:06 AM BST - Reactions to content and scope of Queen’s Speech. Are these the priorities for the country and are there any major omissions? Does it represent a coherent vision for the country?
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The discussion output for this topic is now available at: Queen’s Speech and Cost of Living