What you need to know about the next King’s Speech
By Costanza Poggi, Managing Director and Matthew Dawson, Senior Account Manger
As King Charles returns from delivering a widely lauded speech to US legislators, soon he will again make headlines as he delivers the King’s Speech in Parliament on May 13th. This will be a defining and potentially make or break political moment for Keir Starmer’s Labour leadership, setting out the Government’s policy agenda for the next 12-24 months.
The political backdrop
This speech is crucial for No.10, which in recent weeks has been accused of lacking a clear sense of its political priorities. As the New Statesman’s Editor claimed in a widely read cover story last week, “(Starmer) arrived in No 10 without a plan…. it is the very lack of politics – the inability to build and manage coalitions in pursuit of some deeper purpose or vision – that has destroyed his premiership, allowing it to rot from the inside”.
Indeed, the big uncertainty surrounding this King’s Speech is the Labour leadership. The timing of the speech means that MPs will not gather at Parliament for nearly a week after the local election polls on May 7th, a move which has been viewed as protecting the Labour leadership from any immediate revolt.
A rare opportunity to influence
A Labour King’s Speech is an uncommon event; there has only been one in the last seventeen years and will likely only be two more before the next General Election.
Recognising this, departments across Government have spent months competing for slots in the legislative programme, with the Parliamentary Business and Legislation (PBL) Committee working alongside No. 10 to finalise the speech's contents.
The PBL committee can be regarded as the gatekeeper of the King’s Speech. Its official remit is to “consider matters related to the Government’s parliamentary business and delivery of the legislative programme, and prepare proposals for future legislative programmes”. The committee operates largely out of sight; though a Government release last November outlines its membership and its Chair, Sir Alan Campbell, Leader of the House of Commons.
Its members must weigh up which bills are politically useful, which are meeting a manifesto commitment, and which might create political difficulties for the Government. Still, the ultimate decisions rest with No.10 who must weave these potentially disparate bills into a wider narrative.
Influencing opportunities
We anticipate rare opportunities to secure policy change through primary legislation on the energy transition and nature. Three expected bills are particularly relevant: a Water Reform Bill, an Energy Independence Bill, and a bill to incorporate European regulations covering agriculture and food into UK law.
Our Director for Energy and Infrastructure Jade Pallister has written in detail about what to expect on renewable energy and heat-specific measures in the Energy Independence Bill. But the bill’s implications reach further. Any revision of the oil and gas regulatory regime creates a direct opportunity to secure stronger protections for marine environments, which are significantly impacted by the cumulative effect of chronic oil spills from offshore fossil infrastructure.
Onshore, measures designed to accelerate energy infrastructure development will need to be scrutinised carefully to ensure that hard-won protections, including the Habitats Regulations, remain intact. As we saw during the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure act last year, pitting nature against development benefits neither.
The Water Reform Billis the most significant piece of explicitly environmental legislation in this session, and its arrival has been hard won. The Independent Water Commission’s conclusion that the sector requires a “fundamental reset” resulted in a White Paper committing to abolish Ofwat, establish a new integrated regulator, and overhaul a system that has failed rivers, lakes and seas for decades.
The central reform to fight for is the end of Operator Self-Monitoring, where water companies mark their own homework. The White Paper has already stated the Government’s intention to end it. The task now is ensuring that the commitment is on the face of the Bill, not quietly diluted into a rebranding exercise where companies still generate the core evidence base and regulators simply receive it in a new format. Our detailed piece on the Water Reform Bill sets out exactly where influence is still possible.
The UK-EU Agreements Bill is also not an environmental bill, but those of us who worked to transpose and implement environmental legislation after Brexit understand that the detail of dynamic alignment cuts both ways. Its stated purpose is to implement the agreements reached at the May 2025 UK-EU Summit: a Sanitary and Phytosanitary agreement to reduce border checks on food and agricultural goods, and a link between the UK and EU Emissions Trading Systems.
Brexit was always presented as an opportunity for the UK to go further than the EU on environmental standards and in some areas it has, by introducing stronger animal welfare provisions, a statutory biodiversity net gain requirement for developments, and committing to ban the sale of peat in horticulture. The chancellor herself said that divergence from the bloc’s rules should be the “exception rather than the norm”, which leads to questions about whether DEFRA will succeed in securing exemptions that prevent us from lowering our standards. There will also be cases, like neonicotinoids where the issue cuts the other way, and the UK may end up raising its standards.
Getting a bill is just the start
Securing a bill, or managing to get your issue into one, is just the first step. Legislation really ends up as it started, and is shaped by amendments, bill committees and plays out in media debates and one to one engagement. Every bill that passes contains within it dozens of decisions that will determine whether it achieves what it promises. Our next insight will offer practical guidance on how to navigate that process and use bills to secure the outcomes you need.
What if there is no bill?
For some, the speech will bring disappointment. There have been calls for a Food Bill and the long-promised ban on the sale of horticultural peat, committed to in 2022, has still not materialised in legislation. A standalone Nature Bill, widely rumoured, will also not be included. For organisations that need statutory change to achieve their goals, a quiet King’s Speech is not a reason to pause. Now is the time to build the political case for the legislation you want, to ensure that it makes it into the next parliamentary session.
Want to talk through what the King’s Speech means for your issue? Get in touch.