The Queen's Speech And Infrastructure

Background

Today is the State Opening of Parliament and the Queen's Speech, marking the first day of a new parliamentary session (i.e. year). When there wasn't an election to interrupt the cycle, the Queen's Speech used to be in November each year, but it has been moved to May to coincide with the now fixed election date that month. This means that there hasn't been a Queen's Speech since 25 May 2010, so the last session of parliament unusually lasted for nearly two years. The new session is officially the second session of the 55th Parliament of the UK, which is dated from 1801 and means there have been 55 general elections since then. This is why Parliamentary bills will have '55/2' on their front pages for the next year.

To demonstrate its independence from the Crown, it is supposedly business as usual at the House of Commons until Black Rod bangs on the door to summon members to the Lords hear Her Majesty. Given that the House has been debating the first reading of the Outlawries Bill since at least 1558, they aren't really concentrating on the business at hand.

The Queen's Speech is written by the government of the day and its principal job is to set out the bills that the government intends to bring forward during the session, written in a slightly coded way. The Queen's Speech from 2010 is here, starting at column 31. That Hansard contains a useful list of Parliamentary sessions, MPs elected that year, members of the government and Parliamentary officials. The Hansard for today will too.

Less well known, there is also a Queen's Speech at the end of the session, albeit not personally read by the Queen, summing up what was enacted during the session. The speech from the last session on 1 May this year can be found here, starting at column 1372. Black Rod knocks on the door for that one too. The gap between sessions is called prorogation.

Queen's Speech 2012

The full text of the Queen's Speech can be found here. I thought she was reading the 2010 speech by mistake at first, since the opening words of that one were "My Government's legislative programme will be based upon the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility. The first priority is to reduce the deficit and restore economic growth." and the first words of this one were "My Government's...