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The King’s Speech on 13 May confirmed the upcoming parliamentary programme and there is much for the emergency services to watch as police reform, NHS modernisation, fire safety and cyber resilience will see huge changes taking place.
First up is police. Much of the reform is set out in the white paper published earlier this year, but here in the King’s Speech, there is confirmation that the Police Reform Bill will ‘deliver the biggest reform to policing in decades,’ This includes the creation of the National Police Service where the National Crime Agency, CT policing, the College of Policing and other national functions will come together.
Police and Crime Commissioners will be abolished from May 2028 and the Bill will put in place successor arrangements. The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners confirmed the appointment of a new CEO, former senior civil servant, Jonny Bugg, will take on that role from June 2026.
And with the new governance system in place, this will be accompanied by a single set of ‘National Strategic Policing Priorities’ and a new policing performance system ‘to give greater grip and oversight of policing.’ The Bill will also give a legal basis to a new framework to underpin how policing uses live facial recognition.
The abolition of NHS England has been well trailed and the NHS Modernisation Bill is the vehicle by which it will be achieved. The drive to more devolved mayors is also helped here by giving them a statutory spot on the remaining Integrated Care Boards. The government says that these changes, including the restructure of the ICBS will save £1bn by the end of this Parliament.
There are a few important system changes set out in the Bill. The creation of the SIngle Patient Record is a major plank of this Bill and will see the health and social care records for patients brought together for the first time. In addition, the Health Services Safety and Investigations Body that is focused on patient safety will transfer to the Care Quality Commission. And Healthwatch England will transfer to the Department for Health and Social Care.
In the lead up to the ninth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire, the Remediation Bill commits the government to fix the cladding crisis ‘and make those responsible pay towards fixing the problem they caused.’
To do this, the Bill will give regulators the powers to deal with those who block remediation and a new legal duty to remediate will compel those responsible for fire safety to assess and fix buildings ‘without delay.’ Plans to mandate how external wall assessments are carried out are accompanied by the creation of a new register to identify all buildings 11-18m in height that still require remediation work.
The duty of candour for public servants has links to the Grenfell tragedy but is called the Hillsborough Law because it originates from response to the disaster in 1989 that led to the deaths of 97 Liverpool football fans. This was promised in the Labour Party manifesto and was supposed to have been implemented by April 2025.
Part of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill and relevant UK wide, the government says the Bill will ‘end the culture of cover-ups and institutional defensiveness by bringing forward measures that create duties of candour; individual accountability; honesty and frankness when things go wrong; and ‘parity of arms’ at inquests.’
As well as placing obligations on public servants, it also reforms the offence of misconduct in public office. A new offence of ‘serious impropriety’ and ‘breaching a duty to prevent death or serious harm’ both come with substantial custodial sentences.
The fifth Bill to interest the emergency services is the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill. Ministers will be given new powers to instruct regulators (so that’s the Care Quality Commission for NHS ambulance trusts but it’s not clear if this would apply to the inspectorates for police and fire as they are not regulators) and the organisations they oversee to take steps to prevent cyber attacks where there is a threat to UK national security. There is also a reference to regulators getting new powers to designate critical suppliers to the UK’s ‘essential services,’ but it’s not clear how far that definition extends and if it includes the emergency services.
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