Queen's Speech 2016: Driverless cars, academies and raising educational standards

Dean Velani recaps the key points from the Queen's Speech 2016.

The Queen’s Speech 2016 will inevitably seem peripheral in the context of the European Referendum. A lack of bold or controversial legislation made plain the government’s reluctance to rock the boat. 

With just over a month to go until the polls, the Prime Minister has chosen to focus on infrastructure, technology and social reforms. Measures to compel schools to become academies and a White Paper on a British Bill of Rights have been watered down, to avoid more internal Tory splits. 

Modern Transport Bill

• Measures to encourage investment in driverless cars, electric cars, commercial space planes and drones (Great Britain only)
• Ensuring insurance is available to users of driverless cars (Great Britain only)
• Updating Air Travel Organiser’s Licence (ATOL), the UK’s financial protection scheme for holidays (UK-wide)

The announcement of this Bill enforces the current drivers coming from Office of Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) and the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV). Great Britain has the opportunity to become a global leader in developing autonomous vehicles as we have some of the most open regulation in this area with the Department for Transport issuing its Code of Practice for testing last year. This open regulation should attract investment to the country encouraging others to come and test and develop their solutions here.

As with all new technology, safety comes first and we need to make sure that the integration of these autonomous vehicles into current fleet is done with the utmost care. In addition we must make sure that we understand how the the public and businesses want to use these vehicles. Bringing together industry, legislators, regulators and members of the general public will ensure that we integrate and implement new regulatory regimes at the right time.

The Institution released a case study on Autonomous and Driverless Cars.

Education for All Bill (mainly England only)

• Powers to convert under-performing schools in ‘unviable’ local authorities to academies
• Goal of making every school an academy, but no compulsion to do so
• Head teachers, not councils, to be responsible for school improvement
• A new national funding formula for schools
• Schools to be responsible for assisting excluded pupils

This announcement confirms the Department for Education’s U-turn on forcing all schools to become academies, following a potential rebellion among backbench Tories and Conservative-led councils. The Bill will now seek only to convert schools in poor areas, while setting out a roadmap for all schools becoming academies at some point in the future.

The Institution believes that viability is not always linked to quality or standards since peaks and troughs occur in school numbers for many reasons. We urge the government to ensure that the independence of academies does not tempt them to downgrade the provision of STEM subjects, because they are more costly or because they attract fewer students at A-level.

As more schools become academies, there is a need to ensure mechanisms are in place to bring about innovative change. With greater fragmentation, there is a lack of clarity over who will spearhead the innovation in schools.

The Institution released a report on addressing the skills shortage through solutions to teaching children STEM subjects.

Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill (England and Wales)

• Pre-commencement planning conditions to be streamlined to speed up housing developments
• Changes to make compulsory planning orders ‘clearer, fairer and faster’
• A new statutory framework for paying compensation, based on market value of land
• National Infrastructure Commission to be put on statutory footing
• Land Registry to be privatised

Plans announced to streamline planning conditions will also help speed up the construction of much needed housing, but Government should look at the role that could be played by modular off-site building. Off-site construction technologies, as shown in the Institution’s policy statement ‘UK House Building’, have advanced greatly in recent years and can offer shorter build times, better quality, better energy efficiency, less waste, and lower costs for buyers.

While we are very supportive of the announcement of the National Infrastructure Commission we must ensure that the government does listen to their recommendations and acts upon them in a timely fashion. With any developments of infrastructure we must make sure that it is integrated as there will be an impact on all our networks whether it be energy or transport.

Higher Education and Research Bill (mainly England only)

• Removing barriers for new universities to be set up and for existing providers to get university status
• New Teaching Excellence Framework to focus on raising standards
• Universities to be required to publish detailed admissions data on ethnicity, gender and socio-economic background

The aim of the Bill is to increase quality of teaching and social mobility by allowing new challenger universities to set up. However, opponents will say that competition is not the answer and it continues to heap extra financial pressure upon students.

The Institution advocates the provision of broader routes into engineering degrees and technical courses. We support innovative career paths that will help women and people from non-traditional engineering backgrounds to become engineers, while ensuring the highest quality academic standards associated with UK engineering courses are maintained.

The Institution released a policy statement on encouraging social mobility through studying meritocratic subjects such as engineering.

Bus Services Bill

• To give elected mayors and local transport authorities the power to improve bus services for the people who use them.
• Mayoral combined authorities would be given London-style powers to franchise local services.
• Data about routes, fares and times would be made available across the country to app developers to give passengers better information about how to make the most of local bus services.

This bill should encourage more intelligent mobility for commuters, consumers and businesses. By focussing on greener buses the bill will hope to encourage commuters out from their private vehicles onto the public network with the benefit of improving overall air quality.