24JUL

King's Speech: 27 bills, no RPA Bill

3 min read

12:51UTC

The King's Speech on Wednesday 13 May ran to 27 bills but contained no Representation of the People Bill and no electoral-finance legislation; the Reform-led Lancashire announcement to leave the UK Resettlement Scheme remains unenacted, with the cabinet vote deferred to summer.

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Key takeaway

27 bills, none of them the one that would settle the donor question for Farage.

The King's Speech on Wednesday 13 May 2026 ran to 27 bills. ¹ The headline items are an Immigration and Asylum Bill, a Public Office (Accountability) Bill named after Hillsborough, a Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill, and a Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill. The speech contained no Representation of the People Bill and no electoral-finance legislation in the 27-bill list.

That omission is the operative fact for the donor inquiries running in parallel. The RPA Bill, which would have imposed the retrospective cryptocurrency-donation ban, was excluded from the wash-up before Parliament prorogued on 29 April 2026 and has not been reintroduced. The crypto donations moratorium imposed in March 2026 (the Rycroft review measure) remains the only operative instrument, and Spotlight on Corruption identified three enforcement gaps in that ban (crypto-to-fiat conversion, personal donations to MPs, political memecoins) that persist through the May 2026 ballots . The Standards Commissioner investigation of Nigel Farage (event 12) therefore runs against a partial regulatory backdrop the omitted bill was designed to complete.

Keir Starmer's reply to the Speech leaned on external shocks ("bombs falling, prices rising") rather than internal failure. Kemi Badenoch, replying for the opposition, called him "a man who, faced with a crisis of vision, charisma and electoral success, sent for Gordon Brown." The Badenoch line lands because Starmer appointed Gordon Brown as Special Envoy on Global Finance and Harriet Harman to an unpaid advisory role on 9 May 2026, the same day the resignations began.

One policy claim warrants correction. The Reform-led Lancashire announcement on 9 May 2026 to leave the UK Resettlement Scheme has not become formal policy. The cabinet vote required to enact the withdrawal is scheduled for summer ; the 9 May statement, briefed by Cabinet Member for Rural Affairs Joshua Roberts, was rhetorical. Opposition members called it a "stunt" with no current legal effect. The announcement remains unenacted; the cabinet vote is deferred to summer 2026. Whether Lancashire's cabinet actually carries the motion when it sits, or quietly defers, is the next test of whether Reform's first-week pledges and Reform's first-summer delivery match.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The King's Speech is the opening of Parliament, when the government announces the new laws it plans to pass in the coming year. This year's speech on Wednesday listed 27 planned bills. One bill that was not on the list is the Representation of the People Bill, which would have banned certain cryptocurrency donations to political parties and would have done so retroactively, meaning it would have applied to donations already received. Reform UK has received large cryptocurrency donations from its biggest donor, Christopher Harborne. The bill had been in Parliament before but was dropped from the list of laws passed just before the April election. It was not brought back in Wednesday's speech. The only rule currently in place is a temporary ban on crypto donations that was put in place in March 2026 as a stopgap. A legal-research group called Spotlight on Corruption has identified three types of cryptocurrency donations that the temporary ban does not cover.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The RPA Bill's exclusion from the wash-up reflects the Parliamentary arithmetic of the 29 April prorogation. Four bills were carried through; the RPA Bill competed with the Immigration and Asylum Bill, the Hillsborough accountability bill, and other higher-priority items. The decision was made under the constraints of a four-bill wash-up window, not necessarily a deliberate strategic choice.

The structural root cause is the gap between PPERA's donation-registration framework (designed for cash donations in 1999-2000) and a cryptocurrency donation environment where wallet-to-fiat conversion, personal donations to MPs rather than party structures, and political memecoins sit outside the registration net.

Spotlight on Corruption's identification of the three enforcement gaps predates the RPA Bill; the moratorium plugged one gap and left three. Without legislation, those three gaps persist through the current electoral cycle.

What could happen next?

Consequence
The March 2026 crypto moratorium becomes the operative regulatory framework for the full parliamentary session, leaving the three Spotlight on Corruption enforcement gaps (crypto-to-fiat conversion, personal MP donations, political memecoins) unaddressed through 2027.
Risk
A Standards Commissioner finding against Farage on the £5 million personal gift will generate pressure for fresh legislation, but any bill drafted after a finding would be retrospectively motivated and vulnerable to parliamentary challenge on that basis.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA) was itself excluded from the wash-up before the 1997 general election but was passed in the first session of the Blair government.

The precedent is that major electoral finance legislation is often deferred through legislative transitions and then passed when the new government has a working majority and political appetite. The gap between the 1997 exclusion and the 2000 passage was three years. If the RPA Bill follows the same path under a post-Starmer Labour leadership, the gap could be comparable.

Counter-parallel: The Lobbying Act 2014 was passed in the final session before the 2015 election and was specifically designed to constrain civil society campaign spending in the run-up to elections. It demonstrated that a government under electoral pressure will pass electoral finance legislation that helps its own position and decline to pass legislation that constrains its opponents. The RPA Bill's second exclusion fits the same pattern.

Consensus view: Unlock Democracy's Alexandra Runswick has argued that the exclusion of the RPA Bill from a second consecutive legislative session means the March 2026 Rycroft moratorium is now de facto permanent rather than interim, because no Prime Minister under leadership pressure will prioritise electoral finance legislation that directly constrains the party holding the most council seats.

The moratorium was designed as a holding measure pending legislation; without legislation, the holding measure becomes the rule.

Counter-view: The Electoral Commission's chair, John Pullinger, has noted that the Commission's existing wallet-address inquiry into Reform UK crypto donations runs independently of the RPA Bill and does not require new legislation to reach a finding. A Commission enforcement action under existing PPERA 2000 rules is possible without the new bill; the moratorium gap matters for future donations but not the Commission's current investigation.

Key tension: Whether the RPA Bill's absence reflects a deliberate decision not to constrain Reform's funding model, a judgment that the existing Commission inquiry is sufficient, or simply the political bandwidth cost of a 27-bill programme during a leadership crisis.

First Reported In

Update #8 · Mutiny in week one

GOV.UK· 14 May 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

RPA Bill misses the wash-up window

The RPA Bill's exclusion from wash-up (2796) directly explains why the 13 May King's Speech contained no electoral-finance legislation.

Occurred 25 Apr 2026

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Lancashire quits Home Office refugee scheme

The 9 May Lancashire announcement (3153) is corrected: the cabinet vote required to enact it is deferred to summer, meaning 3153 recorded a rhetorical statement.

Occurred 9 May 2026

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The finance bill Reform outran returns

The bill's revival reopens the finance-reform thread the King's Speech omitted in May.

Occurred 6 Jul 2026

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This Event

King's Speech: 27 bills, no RPA Bill

The omission is the second piece of the donor story (event 12): the legislation that would have settled the cryptocurrency-donation rules has not been brought back, leaving the March 2026 moratorium as the only operative instrument while three regulators investigate one donor.

Led to

ap Iorwerth's six-power Wales Bill ask

The King's Speech on 13 May contained no Wales Bill, making ap Iorwerth's six-demand statement the operative vehicle for constitutional change.

Occurred 19 May 2026

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Different Perspectives

Reform UK

Reform lost Old Catton, the Norfolk seat it won by 1,006 votes ten weeks earlier, to the Conservatives on 16 July, while holding second in both other 16 July by-elections it did not previously hold. The party's May intake already undershot MRP polling by 38%, evidence its local base is thinner than its seat count suggested.

MHCLG / Steve Reed

Reed confirmed 38 new unitaries for 14 counties on 16 July but held back West Sussex and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, saying further time was needed. The department locked in the areas it was confident defending and paused the two it was not.

Local Government Association / litigating councils

Harlow's judicial review, filed 22 July, makes it the fifth council suing over reorganisation, joining Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Portsmouth, with none yet granted a full hearing. New LGA chair Eamonn O'Brien's 7 July intervention now sits behind their case, arguing the timetable itself risks statutory services.

Local Government Association

New chair Eamonn O'Brien broke the LGA's neutrality on reorganisation for the first time since December 2024, telling the incoming prime minister the 'unprecedented scale' of disaggregation risks statutory services and asking him to adjust the LGR timetable, aligning the sector's institutional voice with the judicial review claims Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk have already filed.

Incoming Burnham government

Burnham secured 349 of the backing the NEC's 81-MP threshold required by 13 July, becoming Labour leader on 17 July and prime minister on 20 July without a members' ballot. He now inherits the LGR timetable the LGA wants him to adjust and a finance bill his own backbencher, Liam Byrne, is trying to harden further via amendment NC34.

Rupert Lowe / Restore Britain

Lowe called Farage's Clacton contest a 'Reform-sponsored media circus' and kept Restore Britain out of it, pledging instead to stand in the second by-election he expects the Harborne inquiry to force later this year. The boycott doubles as a signal that Restore Britain, not Reform, will contest the 'real' vote.