Dave and Nick fight back ahead of Queen’s Speech
PRIME Minister David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg launched their coalition fight-back yesterday, visiting small firms in Essex ahead of a Queen’s Speech that they hope will boost business and reaffirm faith in the City.
Today’s announcement of the coalition government’s plans will include a bill to slash red tape and may involve reforms to shareholders’ rights.
The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill will aim to streamline the procedure for unfair dismissal, which employers and lawyers say is open to exploitation and costs businesses and the government millions of pounds every year.
Spurious claims should be able to be thrown out of court quicker than the current system allows, employers say, while the government wants more cases to be solved by conciliation instead of reaching tribunal.
Yet companies will have to deal with plans to give parents the right to transfer maternity leave between themselves, as well as pushing for more flexible so-called family-friendly working hours.
And Clegg’s Liberal Democrat colleague Vince Cable, the coalition’s business secretary, is keen for the Queen’s Speech to lay out plans to bolster the power of shareholders, potentially to show the government is taking action over high executive pay.
The speech is also likely to include:
• A banking reform bill, which could contain some favoured recommendations from the Vickers Report, such as some form of requirement to ringfence retail banking operations.
• A Lords reform bill, although Clegg yesterday played down the importance of such constitutional changes.
• A bill to reduce the huge cost of government sector pensions to the taxpayer. A key austerity measure from the coalition, it is likely to be pushed through despite fierce opposition from public sector trade unions.
Observers will also be noting which policies are left out of the annual speech, signalling that they have been dropped by the government.
A pledge to raise the UK’s foreign aid budget to 0.7 per cent of GDP could be scrapped after a Lords committee said the move could actually hinder development by stoking corruption in poor countries.