UK 21 June 2013 Beyond satire: the Tory right's "alternative Queen's Speech" Bills to privatise the BBC, restore the death penalty, ban the burqa, leave the EU and introduce Margaret Thatcher Day are among the 40 proposed by Tory MPs. Sign up for our weekly email * Print HTML Six weeks too late, the Tory right has launched an "alternative Queen's Speech" - but it was well worth the wait. The list of 40 proposed bills reads like something from a Chris Morris satire. You can view them all below, but here's my quick guide to the most egregious/bizarre. - Ban the burqa (1) - Bring back national service (2) - Leave the EU (3) - Make parents legally responsible for crimes committed by their children (4) - Reintroduce the death penalty (10) - Decriminalise the non-payment of the licence fee (16) - Rename the August bank holiday as Margaret Thatcher Day (18) - Hold a referendum on equal marriage (23) - Privatise the BBC (27) - Abolish the office of Deputy Prime Minister (also known as "kill Nick Clegg") (28) - Leave the EU - again (they're not taking any chances) (30) - Ban sexual harassment claims unless the alleged offence is illegal and has been reported to the police (34) 1) Face Coverings (Prohibition) – Bill to prohibit the wearing of certain face coverings; and for connected purposes. 2) National Service – Bill to provide a system of national service for young persons; and for connected purposes. 3) European Communities Act 1972 (Repeal) – Bill to repeal the European Communities Act 1972 and related legislation; and for connected purposes. 4) Young Offenders (Parental Responsibility) – Bill to make provision for the parents of young offenders to be legally responsible for their actions. 5) Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the United Kingdom) – Bill to make provision to exclude from the United Kingdom foreign nationals found guilty of a criminal offence committed in the United Kingdom. 6) Asylum Seekers (Return to Nearest Safe Country) – Bill to facilitate the transfer of asylum seekers to the safe country nearest their country of origin. 7) Prisoners (Completion of Custodial Sentences) – Bill to require prisoners to serve in prison the full custodial sentence handed down by the court. 8) Fishing Grounds and Territorial Waters (Repatriation) – Bill to make provision for the Government to designate certain fishing grounds and territorial waters as sovereign territory of the United Kingdom outside the control of the Common Fisheries Policy. 9) School Governing Bodies (Adverse Weather Conditions) – Bill to require school governing bodies and headteachers to make provision to keep schools open in adverse weather conditions. 10) Capital Punishment – Bill to allow for capital punishment for certain offences. 11) Government Departments (Amalgamation of Scotland Office, Wales Office and Northern Ireland Office) – Bill to make provision for the amalgamation of the Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland Offices. 12) Residential Roads (Adoption by Local Highways Authority) – Bill to require the handover of residential roads built by developers to local highways authorities within certain time periods; and for connected purposes. 13) Equality and Diversity (Reform) – Bill to prohibit the use of affirmative and positive action in recruitment and appointment processes; to amend the Equality Act 2010 to remove the special provision for political parties in relation to the selection of candidates; and for connected purposes. 14) Sentencing Escalator – Bill to provide that a criminal reconvicted for an offence on a second or further occasion receives a longer sentence than for the first such offence. 15) Leasehold Reform (Amendment) – Bill to amend the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 in relation to the permitted signatories of notices; and for connected purposes. 16) BBC Licence Fee (Civil Debt) – Bill to make provision to decriminalise the non-payment of the BBC licence fee. 17) Smoking (Private Members’ Clubs) – Bill to make provision to allow smoking in a separate ventilated room in a private members’ club if a majority of the members of the club so decide. 18) Margaret Thatcher Day – Bill to make provision that the annual Bank Holiday Monday in late August be known as Margaret Thatcher Day. 19) Department of Energy and Climate Change (Abolition) – Bill to make provision for the abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change and for its functions to be absorbed into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. 20) Married Couples (Tax Allowance) – Bill to make provision for a tax allowance for married couples. 21) Foreign Aid Ring-Fencing (Abolition) – Bill to make provision for foreign aid and development not to be linked to a specific percentage of Gross National Income, but to be set yearly, by Parliament, in relation to need. 22) Charitable Status for Religious Institutions – Bill to make provision for a presumption that religious institutions meet the public benefit test for charitable status. 23) Same Sex Marriage (Referendum) – Bill to make provision for a referendum on whether same sex marriage should be allowed. 24) Wind Farm Subsidies (Abolition) – Bill to make provision for the cessation of subsidies for the development of wind farms. 25) Withdrawal from the European Convention of Human Rights and Removal of Alleged Terrorists – Bill to make provision for an application to the Council of Europe to withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights and to deport alleged terrorists subject to approval by the British courts. 26) Romanian and Bulgarian Accession (Labour Restriction) – Bill to make provision for restrictions on the residence in the UK of Bulgarian and Romanian nationals to continue. 27) BBC Privatisation – Bill to make provision for the privatisation of the British Broadcasting Corporation by providing shares in the Corporation to all licence fee payers. 28) Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Abolition) – Bill to make provision for the abolition of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and its responsibilities to be allocated to other Departments of State. 29) Prime Minister (Replacement) – Bill to make provision for the appointment of a Prime Minister in the event that a Prime Minister is temporarily or permanently incapacitated. 30) United Kingdom (Withdrawal from the European Union) – Bill to make provision for the Government to give notice under Article 50 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union; and for connected purposes. 31) Asylum (Time Limit) – Bill to require that asylum claims in the United Kingdom be lodged within three months of the claimant’s arrival in the United Kingdom; and that persons who have already entered the United Kingdom and wish to make an asylum claim must do so within three months of the passing of this Act. 32) Benefit Entitlement (Restriction) – Bill to make provision to restrict the entitlement of non-UK Citizens from the European Union and the European Economic Area to taxpayer-funded benefits. 33) Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) – Bill to make provision for criminal sanctions against those who have entered the UK illegally or who have remained in the UK without legal authority. 34) Sexual Impropriety in Employment – Bill to require that claims by employees alleging sexual impropriety be limited to cases where the alleged misconduct is contrary to the criminal law and has been reported to the police. 35) Collection of Nationality Data – Bill to require the collection and publication of information relating to the nationality of those in receipt of benefits and of those to whom national insurance numbers are issued. 36) Foreign Nationals (Access to Public Services) – Bill to restrict access by foreign nationals to United Kingdom public services for which no charge is made. 37) House of Lords (Maximum Membership) – Bill to provide for a maximum limit on the number of Peers entitled to vote in the House of Lords, and to provide for a moratorium on new appointments. 38) Control of Offshore Wind Turbines – Bill to restrict the height, number, location and subsidies of wind turbines situated offshore within 20 miles of the coast. 39) Employment Opportunities – Bill to introduce more freedom, flexibility and opportunity for those seeking employment in the public and private sectors; and for connected purposes. 40) EU Membership (Audit of Costs and Benefits) – Bill to require an independent audit of the benefits and costs of UK membership of the European Union. › All this swap and change is bad for SMEs A Conservative rosette worn by a supporter in Loughborough's Market Place. Photograph: Getty Images. George Eaton is political editor of the New Statesman. More Related articles How long will Theresa May survive as Prime Minister? Ian Blackford elected SNP Westminster leader The £350m bus voters: did the Tories fail to win because they assumed austerity was the new normal?
Show Hide image The Staggers 14 June 2017 Why Britain's ageing population won't save the Tories The Conservatives lost every demographic but the fastest-growing: the retired. Here's why they're still in big trouble. Sign up to the Staggers Morning Call email * Print HTML YouGov have produced the first detailed breakdown of who exactly voted for the parties on 8 June, and there is one particularly striking statistic: for the first time ever, Labour is the party for everyone who labours – they won every single working-age demographic. The only group that the Conservatives had a lead over the Conservatives were the retired. They kept power because of their silver firewall – they did very well with pensioners of all ages but particularly with those aged over 75. What I’m hearing from some Tory politicians is that, as Britain’s population is ageing – the over 65s are the fastest growing section of the British population – they don’t need to worry about their electoral setback. In a few years, they’ll have a majority through demographic change. And this is true – assuming that today’s 55-year olds vote like today’s 60-year olds in 2022, the Conservatives would win comfortably with the exact same demographic breakdown that has seen them scrabbling around for a parliamentary majority. We call this a “cohort effect”. Some aspects of voter behaviour stay with us forever, but others are specific to our age or location. (If you think about it, someone who lives in a city centre probably isn’t that bothered if the government raises tax on petrol, someone who lives in the suburbs and needs a car to get to work probably is.) What has tended to happen is there is a pretty strong cohort effect where, as people get older, they become more likely to vote Conservative. But there is a pretty big reason that won’t hold true anymore. A house-sized one in fact. What has happened in pretty much every generation since universal suffrage came to Britain is that as people get older they become more affluent, more likely to have a mortgage and more likely to own a house outright. But the trouble for the Conservatives is that that isn’t happening anymore. It’s not just that people are having to wait longer to get on the housing ladder, but that many of them aren’t doing so at all. What set Theresa May apart from previous Conservative leaders is they all had plans to make more Conservatives. David Cameron and George Osborne had Help to Buy – a policy that stoked house price inflation all the more but created a small but electorally vital chunk of dual-earner couples who owned their homes to the Conservatives. (The difficulty though is that people who live in houses in which 95 per cent of the value is taken up in debt get very angry if they feel the government is taking unnecessary risks with their house price. Anecdotally, from talking to defeated Conservatives, this was behind some of the slippage in their vote.) Margaret Thatcher of course had the right to buy your council house and allowed people to buy shares in privatised industries. Harold Macmillan and Stanley Baldwin both oversaw big booms in the number of houses being built. They all had plans to decisively increase the number of people who would vote Conservative. Anthony Eden not only talked about the need to create “a property-owning democracy”, but did a great deal to help one along. The difficulty is if what you want for Britain is for it to be a property-owning democracy, there was rather more in the Labour manifesto for you than the Conservative one. Unless the Tory party has a policy plant to give today’s 40somethings the same things that the over 60s have to protect, cohort effects won’t save them. Stephen Bush is special correspondent at the New Statesman. His daily briefing, Morning Call, provides a quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics. More Related articles How long will Theresa May survive as Prime Minister? Ian Blackford elected SNP Westminster leader The £350m bus voters: did the Tories fail to win because they assumed austerity was the new normal?
