Queen's Speech offers financial package for UK
Wednesday, 18 November 2009 10:00
The Queen's Speech has delivered a package of bills heavily aimed at ensuring greater fiscal reponsiblity and consumer protection.
It included one of Gordon Brown's flagship conference speech promises - a social care bill aimed at reducing the costs of long term care for the elderly.
The government intends to provide free at-home care as an alternative to the elderly having to spend their last days in care homes. The reforms to the care system, often criticised for being too expensive, are intended to make life easier for elderly couples and their families, many of whom find they spend their life savings or pensions on caring for a partner or parent in old age.
It guarantees free personal care for the 280,000 people with the "highest needs", such as those with serious dementia or Parkinson's disease. The bill is also designed to protect the savings of 166,000 people who currently get free care, saving them from having to pay future charges. And the bill proposes to help 130,000 people needing to enter care homes for the first time to "regain their independence".
The Queen's Speech also included an energy bill, which will give the energy regulator Ofgem the power to force utility companies to lower their prices for gas and electricity supply. The bill specifically sets rules for energy firms to provide support - such as rebates - for poorer customers, with regulator Ofgem having a duty to "proactively" protect them. Currently, the poorest in the UK often pay the most for their energy through coin or card opereated metres.
As expected the Queen's Speech also included a fiscal responsibility bill to enshrine in law Gordon Brown's conference speech commitment to halve the government's budget deficit.
And a new financial services bill was also announced with the aim of giving the Financial Services Authority greater powers to cap the bonus payments made by banks to their employees as well as giving consumers the power to launch class action law suits against financial services firms for wrongdoing. The bill will force banks and other financial firms to set up "living wills" to make them easier to wind down in the event of a crisis. It also bans unsolicited credit card cheques and enables the setting up of national money guidance service.
One bill dropped from the Queen's Speech however was the housing bill announced in June which would have trebled the housing budget to £2.1 billion and set a target of building 110,000 new homes in England and Wales over two years.
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