The (legislative) road ahead

FEATURE

The (legislative) road ahead

Philip Henson presents a cut out & keep guide to the new Parliamentary Session

The 2022–23 Parliamentary Session formally commenced on 10 May 2022 with the State Opening, which was overseen this year by Prince Charles. The content and running order of this article is derived from the 140-page official lobby pack.

Levelling Up & Regeneration Bill

Improving the planning system to give communities a louder voice.

Creating a locally set, non-negotiable levy to deliver the infrastructure that communities need.

Schools Bill

Strengthening the regulatory framework for academy trusts.

Removing barriers to conversion for faith schools and grammar schools and bringing schools into the academy sector when requested by local authorities.

Transport Bill

Creating Great British Railways to act as the single national leader of the railways. Government will reserve powers of direction.

New laws that safely enable self-driving and remotely operated vehicles and vessels, support the roll-out of electric vehicle charge points and enabling the licensing of London pedicabs.

Energy Security Bill

Protecting consumers from unfair pricing.

Developing Carbon Capture Usage and Storage and low carbon hydrogen.

Giving Government the power to give directions to, require information from, and provide financial assistance to, core fuel sector businesses and continuity of fuel supply.

Draft Digital Markets, Competition & Consumer Bill

Preventing fake reviews and tackling subscription traps.

Updating and simplifying regulations for package travel.

Ensuring that businesses across the economy that rely on very powerful tech firms, including the news publishing sector, are treated fairly and can succeed without having to comply with unfair terms.

UK Infrastructure Bank Bill

Establish the UK Infrastructure Bank in legislation, with objectives to support economic growth and the delivery of net zero - with powers to lend directly to local authorities and the Northern Ireland Executive.

Non-Domestic Rating Bill

Shortening the business rates revaluation cycle from five to three years from 2023, and creating new powers for the Valuation Office Agency.

Media Bill

Enabling ‘a change of ownership’ of Channel 4 from a statutory corporation to a new corporate structure that could be sold, and other changes concerning Channel 4’s obligations and remit.

Product Security & Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill

Ensuring that manufacturers, importers and distributors only sell smart devices that meet tougher security standards.

Manufacturers to be required to have a point of contact for reporting software vulnerabilities.

Electronic Trade Documents Bill

Updating the Bills of Exchange Act 1882 and the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act 1992.

Trade documents in digital form to have the same effects as paper counterparts.

Bypass the need for paper and wet ink signatures.

High Speed Rail (Crewe – Manchester) Bill

To provide the powers to build and operate the next stage of HS2 network between Crewe and Manchester.

Draft Audit Reform Bill

Establishing a new statutory regulator, the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority.

A new approach of managed shared audit where challenger firms undertake a share of the work on large-scale audits.

New regulator to have powers to enforce directors’ financial reporting duties; supervise corporate reporting, and to oversee and regulate the accountancy and actuarial professions.

Strengthening corporate governance of firms in or approaching insolvency to take ‘asset stripping’.

Brexit Freedoms Bill

New powers to strengthen the ability to amend, repeal or replace retained EU law by reducing the need to always use primary legislation to do so.

Removing the supremacy of retained EU law as it still applies in the UK.

Procurement Bill

Introducing new arrangements ‘to buy at pace’ when needed to protect life, health, or public order.

Financial Services & Markets Bill

Revoking retained EU law on financial services and replacing it with an approach to regulation ‘that is designed for the UK’.

Updating the objectives of the financial services regulators.

Data Reform Bill

Ensuring that UK citizens’ personal data is protected to a gold standard.

Enabling data to be shared more efficiently between public bodies.

Designing a more flexible, outcomes-focused approach to data protection.

Trade (Australia & New Zealand) Bill

To ensure that the UK can comply with the obligations in the FTA’s with Australia and New Zealand.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Creating a new, simpler regulatory regime for precision bred plants and animals.

Establishing a new science-based authorisation process for food and feed products developed using precision bred organisms.

Higher Education Bill

Ensuring that appropriate fee limits can be applied more flexibly to higher education study within the Lifelong Loan Entitlement.

Social Housing Regulation Bill

Creating new Tenant Satisfaction Measures to allow tenants to see how their landlord is performing compared to others.

Tenants of housing associations to be able to request information from their landlord in a similar way to how the Freedom of Information Act works for tenants of Local Authority landlords.

The Regulator to only be required to give 48 hours’ notice before a survey is carried out.

No cap on the fines that the Regulator can issue to landlords.

Renters Reform Bill

Abolishing ‘no fault’ evictions by removing Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988.

Harbours (Seafarers’ Remuneration) Bill

Empowering ports to surcharge ferry operators if they do not pay the equivalent of the National Minimum Wage and ultimately to suspend them from access to the port.

Social Security (Special Rules for End of Life) Bill

Amending the definition of terminal illness, so that individuals who are considered by a clinician as having twelve months or less to live (rather than the current six months) have fasttracked access to disability benefits.

Public Order Bill

Criminalising the protest tactic of individuals intentionally attaching themselves to others, objects, or buildings to cause serious disruption.

Extending stop and search powers.

Creating a new criminal offence of interfering with key national infrastructure, such as airports, railways, and printing presses, and of obstructing major transport works.

Introducing Serious Disruption Prevention Orders.

National Security Bill

Reforming existing espionage laws (Official Secrets Acts 1911, 1920 and 1939) to tackle modern threats.

Introducing new offences to tackle state-backed sabotage, foreign interference, the theft of trade secrets and assisting a foreign intelligence service.

Introducing a Foreign Influence Registration Scheme requiring individuals to register certain arrangements with foreign governments to deter and disrupt state threats activity in the UK.

Economic Crime & Corporate Transparency Bill

Broadening the powers of the Registrar of Companies’, to investigate and enforce - including new powers to check, remove or decline information submitted to, or already on, the Company Register.

Introducing identity verification for people who manage, own and control companies and other UK registered entities. Creating powers to seize and recover crypto assets, and a civil forfeiture power.

Modern Slavery Bill

Strengthening the requirements on businesses with a turnover of £36 million or more to publish an annual modern slavery statement.

Mandating the reporting areas to be covered in modern slavery statements; requiring organisations to publish their statements on a government-run registry, extending these requirements to public bodies and introducing civil penalties for non-compliance.

Online Safety Bill

Introducing a duty of care on online companies, making them responsible for protecting users and tackling illegal content.

All ‘recognised news publishers’ will be exempt from the Bill’s safety duties.

Ensuring the big social media companies enforce their terms and conditions consistently.

Requiring platforms to have reporting and redress mechanisms, and challenge infringement of rights (such as wrongful takedown).

Ofcom designated as the independent online safety regulator.

Draft Victims Bill

Holding agencies such as the police, CPS and HM Courts and Tribunals Service to account for the service they provide to victims.

Draft Protect Duty Bill

Requiring those in control of certain public locations and venues to consider the threat from terrorism and to implement appropriate and proportionate mitigation measures.

Draft Mental Health Act Reform Bill

Changing the criteria needed to detain people, so that the Act is only used where strictly necessary: where the person is a genuine risk to their own safety or that of others, and where there is a clear therapeutic benefit.

Giving patients the option of an independent mental health advocate.

Bill of Rights

Establishing the primacy of UK case law, clarifying there is no requirement to follow the Strasbourg case law and that UK Courts cannot interpret rights in a more expansive manner than the Strasbourg Court.

Claimants will need to show significant disadvantage before a human rights claim can be heard in court.

Courts to consider behaviour of the claimant when considering making an award.

Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill

Banning the exports of livestock for fattening and slaughter.

Strengthening police powers for livestock worrying.

Tackling puppy smuggling and creating a new pet abduction offence.

Conversion Therapy Bill

Banning non-physical conversion therapies, and introducing Conversion Therapy Protection Orders.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Creating a new complaints scheme run by the regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), free to access for students, staff and visiting speakers who believe their speech has been unlawfully restricted, overseen by a Director of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom.

Introducing new freedom of speech and academic duties on higher education providers, their constituent colleges and students’ unions.

OFS to have the power to impose penalties for breaches.

Boycotts, Divestment & Sanctions Bill

Empowering Government to ban public bodies, that are already subject to public procurement rules, from conducting their own boycott campaigns against foreign countries or territories where these are inconsistent with official UK foreign policy.

Philip Henson is a Partner and Head of Employment Law at EBL Miller Rosenfalck in London. Chair of the Law Reform Committee of the City of Westminster and Holborn Law Society (philip.henson@ebl-mr.com).