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LONDON: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown unveiled a crackdown on the banking industry Wednesday as part of a voter-friendly agenda designed to boost his party's chances at elections barely six months away.
In a traditional Queen's Speech detailing its final legislative plans before ballots due by June, the government also put boosting growth and jobs as its top priority as Britain emerges from the global slowdown.
Brown's Labour party, which has been in power since 1997, looks set to suffer a heavy defeat to the main opposition Conservatives in the election.
However, the prime minister insisted the new measures - which included a guarantee on personal care for the elderly, laws on carbon capture and storage and a ban on cluster bombs - were not simply electioneering.
"When we propose these measures we are speaking up, not in the party interest but in the national interest," Brown told the House of Commons.
"We are responding to new national needs - social care, climate change, economic restructuring, high levels of education - standing up for Britain."
Queen Elizabeth II outlined the government's programme in her annual Queen's Speech to parliament, in a ceremony full of pomp and tradition.
"My government's overriding priority is to ensure sustained growth to deliver a fair and prosperous economy for families and businesses, as the British economy recovers from the global economic downturn," she said.
The plans included a new law to entrench Brown's pledge to halve the budget deficit in four years, while another proposed bill would empower the financial watchdog to intervene in bankers' contracts.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) would be able to tear up pay deals if they are considered to promote risky behaviour, which was widely blamed for exacerbating the global financial crisis.
Full details of the plans are not expected until finance minister Alistair Darling unveils his pre-Budget report on December 9.
But business leaders have already expressed concern, with John Cridland of the CBI lobby group warning the government "must be very careful not to damage the competitiveness of the UK's financial sector at this critical time".
Miles Templeman, head of the Institute of Directors, added: "It's somewhat worrying that the government feels it needs the power of legislation to meet its own fiscal plans. We need more self-discipline and less legislation."
The government has only a few months to push through the 15 bills announced Wednesday before the next election, and Conservative leader David Cameron dismissed it as "just a Labour press release on palace parchment".
"They've run out of money, they've run out of time, they've run out of ideas and we've just seen from the prime minister that they've run out of courage as well," he said.
The Queen's Speech is a state occasion defined by traditions dating back more than 350 years.
The monarch travels in a royal carriage and with a cavalry escort from Buckingham Palace to parliament, where she dons ceremonial robes and a glittering crown before taking to the throne in the House of Lords.
An official known as Black Rod is then sent to summon elected lawmakers from the House of Commons to the Lords chamber to hear the queen, as no monarch has been allowed in the Commons since the English civil war.
The door is initially slammed in his face - another reminder of the independence of the Commons - before lawmakers follow him back to gather with the peers in their ermine robes to hear the speech.
- AFP/yb
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