Starmer's new bills include tourist tax powers for English mayors

A crowded programme with a clear governing test

Sir Keir Starmer’s first King’s Speech set out a legislative programme that was striking not just for its size, but for its ambition. Delivered by King Charles III on 17 July 2024, it contained 40 bills, the largest number in a monarch’s speech since 2005 and the second highest since 1997. The government presented the package as mission-led and tied to security, fairness and opportunity for all, while insisting the plans would remain consistent with its fiscal rules.

That breadth matters because it shows the new Labour government trying to do several things at once: show pace after the election, signal control over public finances and use lawmaking to reshape how the state, local government and the labour market work. The legislative agenda covered transport, public services, housing, energy and public safety, and it also carried over two bills from the previous Parliament, the Holocaust Memorial Bill and the High Speed Rail (Crewe to Manchester) Bill. In institutional terms, this was less a narrow policy reset than a declaration that the government intended to govern through a dense and unusually active legislative machine.

The tourist tax is the bill most likely to be felt first

Among the headline measures, the proposed overnight visitor levy is the easiest to picture in daily life and the hardest to ignore politically. In November 2024, the government said England’s mayors would be able to invest in transport, infrastructure and the visitor economy through a new levy on overnight stays. The charge would be modest and set locally, not imposed nationally, which is a significant political distinction: the tax would be framed as a local growth tool rather than a Whitehall grab for revenue.

The first people to feel it would be overnight visitors, especially in cities with large hotel, short-stay and tourism sectors. That means hotel operators, conference venues, hospitality workers and local councils would all be part of the implementation picture. The practical hurdle is not simply whether the levy is popular, but whether local leaders can design a system that is simple enough to collect, visible enough to generate meaningful income and politically defensible enough to survive comparisons with places already using similar tools.

The government has pointed to cities such as New York, Paris and Milan as examples of places where local visitor charges are already part of the funding mix. The idea also echoes Scotland, where the Visitor Levy Act 2024 received Royal Assent on 5 July 2024 and gives local authorities the power to impose a levy on people staying overnight in certain accommodation. London has already pushed the argument forward at home: the London Assembly said it wants a tourism levy operational by April 2027, and the Local Government Association has argued that a visitor levy would give local areas an important new income-raising power.

That combination of local discretion and visible impact gives the policy a strong political profile. If it works, it could become one of the clearest examples of Labour devolving power while extracting revenue for local priorities. If it fails, the attack line is obvious: a new tax on visitors that is unevenly applied, hard to administer or unable to deliver the promised investment.

Digital ID is less visible, but more structurally significant

The government’s digital identity plans may not provoke the same immediate reaction as a tourist tax, but they could prove more consequential in how the state operates. Official guidance says the Data (Use and Access) Bill would create a statutory footing for digital verification services, not a mandatory digital ID system or ID cards. That distinction is central, because it places the policy in the realm of verification and access rather than compulsory identity papers.

The government has argued that many people already use similar technologies when scanning a driving licence, using a passport at an automated border gate or unlocking a phone with facial recognition. Later material on the new scheme says the aim is to make it easier to access government and private-sector services, including renting, benefits and childcare, while also making digital ID part of right-to-work checks. That last point is where the policy becomes most politically sensitive: it links digital identity directly to labour-market enforcement and immigration control.

The groundwork for this has been building for some time. In January 2024, regulations under the Digital Economy Act 2017 created a digital identity verification services objective, and the government has also set out a digital identity trust framework intended to provide standards and oversight for providers. Taken together, these measures show a government trying to create a controlled digital infrastructure rather than a single centralised ID card scheme.

The implementation hurdles are substantial. Any system that touches housing, benefits, childcare and employment checks must win public trust on privacy, security and usability. It also has to avoid becoming a patchwork of incompatible platforms that help some people while excluding others who struggle with smartphones, documents or online access. The political challenge is just as sharp: Labour wants the efficiency gains of digital modernisation without inviting the suspicion that it is building a surveillance state by another name.

Why these measures will define how the government is judged

The tourist tax and digital ID stand out because both are policy instruments with visible daily effects, even if they operate in very different ways. One would be felt in hotel bills and local investment debates; the other would shape how people prove who they are when they rent a home, start a job or access services. That makes them more than technical additions to a crowded legislative programme. They are tests of whether the government can turn broad promises about growth, fairness and opportunity into systems that people actually encounter.

They also reveal a governing strategy built around institutional change. The visitor levy pushes power toward English mayors and local decision-makers, while digital identity pushes the state toward a more modern system of verification and enforcement. One is about local fiscal autonomy, the other about national administrative capacity. Both are politically loaded because they ask voters to accept that reform can be both practical and intrusive at the same time.

For Starmer’s government, that is the larger story behind the 40-bill programme. The legislative crowding shows urgency, but the measures most likely to define the government are not the most abstract ones. They are the ones that change how cities raise money and how citizens prove who they are, because those are the bills that will move from Westminster into ordinary life first.