King’s Speech: FWD response
Food & Drink Wholesale UK reflects on the key points of yesterday’s King’s Speech most likely to impact on wholesale
The legislative agenda for the coming parliamentary session comprised more than 30 Bills focused on economic growth, public service reform, energy security and closer cooperation with the EU. Key measures announced included:
- A proposed European Partnerships Bill aimed at facilitating closer UK-EU cooperation across trade, food standards and energy
- A Regulating for Growth Bill intended to streamline regulation and support investment
- An Energy Independence Bill focused on domestic energy resilience and market reform
- Further reforms relating to planning, infrastructure, immigration and digital identity
The most relevant Bills for members are the European Partnership Bill, which will provide the legislative framework to implement new UK-EU agreements on food and drink, emissions trading and electricity, the Small Business Protections (Late Payments) Bill, Competition Reform Bill, Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, which FWD explains below.
European Partnership Bill
Following the first UK-EU summit in May 2025, the UK-EU Common Understanding set the stage for new agreements on food and drink, emissions trading and electricity. Since the Summit, the UK and EU have been negotiating the detailed legal texts on the new agreements, including UK decision shaping rights in areas where we will be aligning.
The Bill will provide a framework of powers to ensure agreements with the EU can be implemented now and in the future, including:
- Powers to fulfil treaty obligations in the agreements with the EU where it serves the national interest. This will enable the domestic implementation of relevant commitments so that the benefits of the agreements can be unlocked. These powers will mean that Parliament has its say before EU law is applied in the UK.
- A power to extend the application of the Bill to new treaties with the EU in the future.
The government uses the example of the food and drink deal, which could add up to £5.1 billion a year to the economy (and up to £9 billion when combined with the emissions trading agreement), increase agricultural exports to the EU by 16 per cent and cut queue times for lorries at the border. The agreement will also simplify the movement of food and plants between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, while retaining Northern Ireland’s access to the EU’s single market.
Small Business Protections (Late Payments) Bill
This will:
- Impose maximum payment terms of 60 days, with strictly limited exemptions (when both parties are large companies, when the purchaser is the smaller party, or when the goods or services are being imported or exported).
- Enforce mandatory interest for late payments at eight per cent above the Bank of England base rate.
- Introduce a time limit for raising invoice disputes, before payment is due.
- Require boards or audit committees of persistently late-paying large companies to publish commentary on poor payment performance and intended actions to address it.
- Give the Small Business Commissioner new powers to investigate businesses suspected of conducting poor payment practices, adjudicate disputes between businesses outside of the court process, and fine businesses that persistently pay their suppliers late or fail to comply with the legislation.
Competition Reform Bill
- Under the current system, some of the most significant CMA decisions are led by an independent CMA Panel, and members of the CMA Board are legally prevented from engaging in these decisions. The Bill will give the CMA Board a role in decisions on mergers and market investigations, improving accountability to Parliament, businesses and the public. The government will ensure appropriate governance and procedural safeguards to maintain expert decision-making that is independent of government.
- The Bill will speed up market reviews so that where markets are not working properly – such as when consumers face high prices or businesses face barriers to entry – competition problems are identified and addressed more quickly. In most cases, reviews will take no longer than 18 to 24 months. This means competition problems in markets can be fixed faster, so consumers and businesses can feel the benefit sooner. Any remedies placed on businesses will be regularly reviewed, so they remain necessary and proportionate. Where appropriate, regulators for specific sectors will be able to take responsibility for ongoing remedies, reducing the number of regulators that businesses need to deal with.
- It will give businesses greater certainty about whether a merger is likely to be reviewed in the UK. This will help businesses plan transactions with greater confidence, while ensuring the CMA can continue to intervene where a deal could harm competition and risk higher prices or reduced choice for UK consumers.
Cyber Security and Resilience Bill
This will expand the remit of existing regulations to better protect more of the core services people and businesses rely on.
- Many managed IT companies will be regulated under the Bill. These organisations deliver key services such as IT helpdesks and cyber security to private and public sector organisations like the NHS. They will need to meet new security duties as they hold trusted access across government, critical national infrastructure and business networks.
- Data centres will be brought into scope as they are critical to keeping the UK running, underpinning essential and digital services from patient records and online payments to email services and AI development.
- Operators that manage the flow of electricity to smart appliances, like electric vehicle charge points and electrical heating appliances in homes, will also have to meet new security requirements. This will reduce the risk of disruption to consumers using smart-energy appliances, and the electricity network, bolstering the UK’s energy security.
The Bill will also ensure cyber regulators are more effective and consistent to protect essential services and ensure the UK is resilient to new threats:
- Organisations in scope will need to report a greater range of harmful cyber incidents to their regulator and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) within 24 hours, with a full report within 72 hours, to ensure support can be on hand more quickly to help build a stronger national picture of cyber threats.
- If a data centre or digital and managed service provider faces a significant or potentially significant cyber incident, they will have to take reasonable steps to identify and notify promptly the customers who are likely to have been impacted, so organisations can act fast to protect their business, people and services.
- Enforcement will be modernised, including tougher turnover-based penalties for serious breaches. Companies providing essential services to the public and businesses should ensure they have tough protections in place to keep their systems up and running.
- Ministers will be given new powers to instruct regulators and the organisations they oversee to take specific, proportionate steps to prevent cyber attacks where there is a threat to UK national security. This includes requiring that they bolster their monitoring or isolate high-risk systems to protect and secure essential services.
- The government will be more agile and responsive to evolving cyber threats with powers to make changes to the regime in secondary legislation, such as bringing more services into scope, or updating security requirements.
