BORIS Johnson is to force a showdown with deadlocked Parliament by daring MPs to vote down his new laws ahead of a winter general election.
A total of seven new bills from today’s Queen’s Speech will be introduced to Parliament tomorrow, covering voter-friendly subjects from the environment to sentencing and broadband.
The PM is also pressing ahead with pushing his entire new legislative agenda – unveiled by the monarch yesterday – to a crunch vote on Tuesday next week.
No10 admits Boris faces an uphill battle to pass any of it with the Brexit battles last month leaving him 45 MPs short of a majority.
But they insisted yesterday that the PM would refuse to resign even if he lost the Queen’s Speech vote, traditionally seen as a no-confidence issue.
Laying down the gauntlet, the PM’s spokesman said: “If MPs choose to vote against the Queen’s Speech, it will be for them to explain to public why they’re voting against greater support for public services, including the police, schools and hospitals”.
Mr Johnson also declared yesterday: “People are tired of stasis, gridlock and waiting for change”.
The seven different bills being introduced today are entitled Telecommunications Infrastructure, Environment, Animal Welfare, Prisoners Disclosure of Information, Divorce, Dissolution and Separation, Pension Schemes and the Health Service Safety Investigations Bill.
The Environment Bill – nicknamed the new clean air act – will set up new legally binding targets to curb toxic air pollutants for the first time.
A framework to put long-term legal targets in place on water quality and plastic pollution will also be laid out.
And a new watchdog, the Office of Environmental Protection, will scrutinise laws, investigate complaints and take enforcement action against public authorities to uphold standards.
Under the Pension Schemes Bill, reckless bosses who plunder pension schemes will face up to seven years in jail.
It will bring in a new sentence of up to seven years in prison for bosses who run their pension schemes into the ground or plunder them to line their own pockets.
The Labour leader dismissed the 22 new bills in the Queen’s Speech as an election gimmick.
Jeremy Corbyn told the Commons: “The Prime Minister promised that this Queen’s Speech would dazzle us – on closer inspection it turns out to be nothing more than fool’s gold”.
