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Queen's speech sets out Boris Johnson's focus on Brexit and the NHS – live news
Queen's speech sets out Boris Johnson's focus on Brexit, the NHS and terrorist sentencing – live news
(32 minutes later)
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including the Queen’s speech and Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn speaking in the subsequent Commons debate
Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including the Queen’s speech and Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn speaking in the subsequent Commons debate
The Queen is about to start. Boris Johnson is still grinning intensely.
Here is the text of the Queen’s speech.
MPs are not processing from the Commons to the Lords, having been summoned by Black Rod.
And here is the 151-page government briefing document (pdf) giving details of the bills and other legislative proposals planned for this session of parliament.
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn are walking side by side, although they don’t seem to be talking. Johnson is smiling; Corbyn isn’t.
From the Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn
The Queen is now on the throne in the House of Lords.
The Queen’s speech always ends with two messages.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, is now processing into the chamber of the Commons.
This is addressed to MPs only, because the House of Lords does not deal with the estimates, the government’s department-by-department spending plans.
The Royal Standard is now flying above the Houses of Parliament now that the Queen has arrived.
The Queen goes on:
This is the Queen’s 66th Queen’s speech, according to the BBC.
This means that, notwithstanding what is being announced today, the government reserves the right to introduce other bills. Governments often pass very significant bills at short notice that were never featured in the Queen’s speech.
The Queen is leaving Buckingham Palace on her way to Westminster.
The Queen ends:
Here are some more lines from Emily Thornberry’s interview with the Today programme this morning.
And that’s it. The speech is over.
Thornberry said that one of her strengths was that she could offer “clear strategic thinking”. Referring to how she argued against Labour agreeing to an early election, she said:
The final passages are about defence and foreign policy.
She cited the response to the Salisbury poisoning attack as an example of when Jeremy Corbyn was led down by his advisers. She said:
To protect members of the armed forces from “vexatious claims”, the government is proposing an armed forces (legal protections) bill.
She dismissed suggestions that her background might be a handicap in the the leadership contest. She said:
More on Johnson and Corbyn, from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has insisted “democracy must and will prevail” as she confirmed she has now written to Boris Johnson formally requesting the power for Holyrood to hold a second independence referendum, the Press Association reports. She said that following last week’s election victory in which her party took 47 of the 59 Scottish seats at Westminster, the case for another referendum was “unarguable”. In a statement delivered at Bute House, her official residence in Edinburgh, Sturgeon said:
From ITV’s Joe Pike
Sturgeon has also published a 38-page report (pdf) setting out arguments for why Scotland should have the power to decide for itself to hold a legally-valid independence referendum, instead of having to get approval from London under the Scotland Act, as is the case now.
The Queen turns to the constitution.
The UK government has said it will not give the Scottish parliament the power to hold a second independence referendum, arguing that the matter was settled by the referendum in 2014. But Sturgeon said:
Sometimes the Queen’s speech is significant for what it does not say. This tells us very little about what the government is planning, but there was a passage in the Conservative manifesto that triggered suspicions that Boris Johnson has grand ambitions in this area. It said:
Good morning. It’s Queen’s speech day, again, with the Queen heading for parliament only two months after her last visit to read out the government’s legislative programme. Only this time it’s for real, because Boris Johnson now has a majority to pass the bills he is announcing. We are expecting the speech to be a beefed-up version of what we heard in October, with some of the measures in the phantom Queen’s speech being regurgitated, but some extra legislation added too.
Ministers have said very little about what this means in practice.
Here is my colleague Matthew Weaver’s preview story.
The next section of the speech covers the economy and climate change.
In the meantime electioneering in the Labour leadership contest continues. Having declared her candidature with an article in the Guardian yesterday, Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, has been giving interviews this morning. In her article she criticised Jeremy Corbyn for ignoring her warning that backing an early election would be an “act of catastrophic political folly”. Today, though, Thornberry has shifted her focus somewhat, laying the blame for Labour’s failings not so much with Corbyn himself, but with his advisers.
There will be two bills covering broadband, a telecommunications infrastructure (leasehold property) bill and a telecommunications (connectivity) bill. There will also be an environment bill.
This is what she told Sky News when asked if she was willing to blame Corbyn for the election defeat.
From Labour’s Anneliese Dodds
Thornberry did not name the advisers she was referring to. But people in the Labour party will have understood that she was referring to Seumas Milne, Corbyn’s director of communications and strategy, and Karie Murphy, who was Corbyn’s chief of staff before being moved to Labour HQ to run the general election, reportedly in response to complaints about how she was running his office. When it was put to Thornberry that she was talking about these two, she did not demur.
Now the Queen is talking about law and order.
She also suggested Milne and Murphy should be dismissed. Referring to the fact that staff working in Labour’s HQ, in Corbyn’s office and for the shadow cabinet are facing the sack, but not Milne and Murphy, she said that was wrong. She said:
There are five bills being proposed relating to criminal justice - a counter terrorism (sentencing and release) bill, a sentencing bill, a serious violence bill, a domestic abuse bill, and a prisoners (disclosure of information about victims) bill - as well as divorce legislation, the divorce, dissolution and separation bill.
Here is the agenda for the day.
The next bit of the speech covers immigration and what might broadly be seen as cost of living measures. The Queen says:
9.15am: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, holds a press conference to mark the publication of a paper making the case for Scotland being given the power to hold a second independence referendum.
On immigration, there will be an immigration and social security coordination (EU withdrawal) bill. The other bills referred to here are an employment bill, a pension schemes bill, a renters’ reform bill, a fire safety bill, a building safety bill and an online harms bill.
11.25am: The state opening of parliament commences, with MPs and peers gathering in the Lords to hear the Queen’s speech.
More on Johnson and Corbyn.
2.30pm: Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn speak in the Queen’s speech debate.
As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web, although mostly I will be focusing on the Queen’s speech and the subsequent debate. We plan to publish a summary at the end of the day.
You can read all the latest Guardian politics articles here. Here is the Politico Europe roundup of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads.
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