The excellent 2010 film written by David Sadler and starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helen Bonham-Carter depends on the emotional tension between by the dramatic historical context (the declaration of war in 1939) and the deeply personal battle fought by the king with his stutter. Notwithstanding the wars being fought around the world at the moment, the King's speech we heard on November 7th did not have quite such a momentous background, but the transport industry at least has been anticipating it keenly. The last Queen's speech included a transport bill which, as it turned out, was elbowed out by more urgent business, and there is a backlog of transport business that many parts of the sector are anxiously waiting to see progressed.
This King's speech is a time-hallowed part of the British constitution which is simultaneously a bit of historical play-acting (that stuff with Black Rod and lots of dressing-up) and a reminder of some of the deep machinery that operates our country: the King reads a speech written for him by the ("his") government setting out the things they intend to schedule parliamentary time for. Things not in the speech won't get allocated parliamentary time, which means that laws will not be made for them. Of course it's not that simple: a huge amount of law (often described not as "law" but as "regulation" but, for most practical purposes this is a distinction without a difference) is now made as what is called "secondary legislation" - basically what happens is that a minister decides on some laws which go through parliament on the nod (certainly without any meaningful debate in the house). The underlying principle of British parliamentary democracy is that once every five years or so we get to vote for an MP, who is standing for a party, which has set out a manifesto, which they will implement if they get a majority of MPs elected. So we might expect the King's speech just to be listing the next bits of the manifesto that they will be working through. In practice it doesn't really work like that. As a reminder, the Conservative and Unionist party manifesto in 2019 included such transport-related items as Northern Powerhouse Rail, a superbus network, a £50m cycling infrastructure fund and promises to fix potholes.
Already working through the parliamentary sausage machine is a bill to legislate for later stages of HS2 and this, alone, illustrates that gap between the constitutional theory and modern practice. The Victorian railway boom depended on a stream of bills (broadly, one per line) being passed through parliament. In the last few weeks we have seen major, strategic changes to infrastructure plans being announced by the Prime Minister (note: not the Transport minister) without any discussion or even prior notification to parliament.
Anyway, enough of the constitutional noodling: what did the transport industry get the Kings speech, what did it not get, and what, in a perfect world, might we imagine besides? Firstly what was in there?
- A bill to legislate for autonomous vehicles. An interesting one this, since it is as much a Department for Business-sponsored bill as a Department for Transport one. The point of this bill is not to accelerate the use of autonomy on our roads: it is to create the conditions where companies can develop, build and sell them (thus supporting the economy). This is a big one for the auto industry.
- A bill to enable the creation of Great British Rail. This is bread-and-butter stuff but arguably urgent: there has been commentary suggesting that the important stuff can be done without primary legislation. Perhaps. Anyway, they can get on with it now and GBR is a critical part of the plan to improve the services and economics of the railways.
- A bill to address the "menace" of unlicensed pedicabs. "Pedicab" is the unlovely name for those tricycle rickshaws increasingly seen cycling round certain parts of our city centres. No doubt this needs to be worked through, but so do e-scooters and other novel mobility modes and it's hard to see why this menace is bigger than all the other menaces.
What wasn't in there?
- As mentioned above; a plan for legalising e-scooters (currently legal to buy, but not to use).
- Legislation to implement the government's announcement of a Road Safety Investigation Branch. The improvements in road safety have stalled with 1600 people per year still losing their lives on the nation's roads. The RSIB is part of a safe systems approach that experts believe can make a real difference.
- A plan to achieve the promised EV charging roll-out. (There is an argument that this is more about funding than legal powers and perhaps a bill is not the most urgent thing here, but clarity on who is supposed to do what, and the extent to which they are or are not able to do that in a sensible way, is certainly needed.)
This is all well and good and many of these bread and butter issue will get managed one way or another. But what should we be aspiring to over and above this? In recent weeks we have seen a couple of very significant reports from the National Infrastructure Commission and the Climate Change Commission respectively. Both of these are independent bodies set up to monitor and report on their respective areas. Both reports set out large gaps between where we are and where we need to get to, as a society. It will be said that government needs time to digest, consider and respond to their reports. This is true, and it is also the case that nothing the reports said is in any real sense a surprise. It' a shame that there is not a greater sense of urgency.
Also missed is any fundamental change to the way that transport infrastructure or operations are funded or managed. The split between nationally funded and local funded roads (and other infrastructure) has only got more complicated with devolution, the creation of new tiers of government (for instance metro mayors, and, for transport, the sub-national transport bodies in England). The way that these structures interact with funding delivers inequalities across the country, making it harder to "level up" and slowing innovation and improvement everywhere. This parliament will only last for a bit over a year, at most, and it will be a challenge to squeeze in all the announced bills into the available time, but even a year is a long time when we face the challenges of the climate crisis, the cost of living crisis, and the continuing toll caused by crashes.
The old saw that governments campaign in poetry and govern in prose is always true, but what if we were to set our sights higher: the King's speech is a political act, but is it so unreasonable to wish for something more ambitious that business as usual?
