techUK Analysis: The King’s Speech

This bill updates the UK’s cross-sector cyber regulations - the Network and Information Systems (NIS) Regulations 2018 - for the first time since they were introduced. It expands the regulatory perimeter to cover more digital services and supply chains, strengthens incident reporting requirements, and gives regulators new enforcement and cost-recovery powers.

The bill reached report stage in the Commons before Parliament was prorogued. techUK has engaged extensively with DSIT and the bill team since its introduction and broadly welcomes its direction.  We look forward to continuing to engage as the Bill continues its journey through Parliament to help ensure that the measures are fit for purpose, practically implementable and can deliver their intended outcomes, protecting the UK from a diverse range of threats and enabling organisations to harness the benefits that technology can offer.

Also carried over, the Railways Bill establishes Great British Railways as a publicly-owned body responsible for rail infrastructure and most passenger services. The technology sector’s interest here is primarily in procurement: GBR will eventually consolidate what are currently 43 separate commissioning relationships into a single client model. For rail technology suppliers - ticketing platforms, station systems, data services - the transition framework will determine whether consolidation produces a more accessible market or a more concentrated one.

techUK is engaging with civil servants and parliamentarians, and has called for a clear strategic direction, strong partnership with the private sector, GBR’s functions to be meaningfully separated, and GBT’s functions to be placed in a wider context of integrating transport.

The Government is proceeding with legislation to establish a National Digital Identity, appearing within the Digital Access to Services Bill, aiming to modernise how citizens interact with public services. The Bill will create the legal framework for the government to create, issue, and use a Digital ID credential - free to access, and usable across public services. It builds on the GOV.UK Wallet launch in January 2025, the announcement of a national digital identity in September 2025, and the March 2026 consultation, "Making public services work for you with your digital identity."

While techUK welcomes the prioritisation of digital ID from government, further detail on the exact scope and focus of any proposed legislation will be needed. techUK will continue to engage closely with Government on the next steps with the public consultation process and following the announcement of this Bill. Ensuring partnership between government and the private sector is strong and sustained is now more important than ever to ensure the UK continues to drive a thriving, open and fair digital ID ecosystem.  See here the full breakdown of the Digital Access to Services Bill.

The bill mandates 60-day maximum payment windows and enforces interest at 8% above the Bank of England base rate. Crucially, it introduces time limits for invoice disputes - curbing the use of frivolous queries to delay payment - and empowers the Small Business Commissioner to fine persistent offenders.

For technology scaleups, whose cash flow is frequently held hostage by the procurement cycles of larger organisations, these reforms will be welcome by members. techUK has long maintained that "growth" is impossible while capital is trapped in the supply chain.

This is the legislative side of the most significant structural re-engineering of the health service in over a decade - abolishing NHS England and repatriating its functions to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). The Bill’s highlight is the statutory mandate for a Single Patient Record - a long-sought unification of fragmented health and social care data accessible via the NHS App. This is paired with a radical decentralisation of commissioning power to Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and the transfer of Healthwatch England's functions into the DHSC.

While techUK is excited by the ambition of features enabling technological transformation of the NHS to improve services, such as Single Patient Record, the dismantling of the national centre risks creating a technical knowledge vacuum means the industry must be meaningfully engaged if the transformation is to be successful. techUK stands ready to support implementation through deeper engagement between the NHS and the technology sector. This includes co-designing open procurement frameworks, accelerating interoperability standards, and ensuring a clear commercial pathway for innovation adoption.

This bill provides the primary vehicle for the "Leeds Reforms" set out by the Chancellor in July 2025 - a package intended to shore up the UK’s status as a global financial hub amid heightening international competition. The Bill’s most significant structural shift is the consolidation of the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) into the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a move aimed at reducing regulatory overlap and providing a more cohesive interface for firms. This is paired with an overhaul of the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) to improve consistency in decision-making and a notable scale-back of the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SMCR), with the administrative burden on firms expected to be reduced by 50% through a narrower focus on top-tier accountability.

We are encouraged by the introduction of a new, streamlined authorisation pathway for early-stage fintechs, alongside regulatory frameworks for stablecoins and ESG ratings providers, reflects a necessary attempt to codify the digital assets market within the mainstream. However, the true test of how pro-growth it really is will be the execution of ring-fencing reform - while the Government aims to unlock finance for UK SMEs, the outcome remains contingent on final agreements with the Bank of England. techUK’s Financial Services Council will be watching closely.

The bill is the legislative manifestation of the government’s "reset" with Brussels, providing the framework required to implement agreements born from the May 2025 UK-EU Summit. It is aimed to be the mechanism for reducing the frictional costs of trade with the EU. By facilitating deals on electricity, emissions trading, and agri-food the Bill aims to dismantle some of the administrative barriers that have been introduced post-Brexit.

For the technology sector, the implications for energy and emissions are paramount. Streamlining the UK-EU electricity and carbon markets is necessary for the energy-intensive digital infrastructure sector. techUK welcomes the removal of unnecessary red tape, yet we remain cautious of any alignment that defaults to a passive acceptance of Brussels' regulatory trajectory. We will be paying close attention to the progress of this legislation.

Building on the 2025 Regulation Action Plan and the Chancellor’s 2026 Mais Lecture, the Bill introduces a strengthened "Growth Duty" for key regulators - including the HSE, Environment Agency, and Natural England - effectively mandating that they weigh investment and growth alongside their core protective functions.

For techUK, the highlight is the creation of cross-economy "sandboxing powers" — legal mechanisms that allow for the temporary suspension of specific rules to facilitate live-market trials in high-growth sectors such as autonomous maritime systems and medical devices.

As techUK has noted, the UK has an internationally recognised track record in regulatory sandboxing — most notably through the FCA's model - which has influenced approaches globally, but not all sandboxes have been useful or effective, and it is important to learn from previous experience about what works and what doesn't. Done well — with clear eligibility criteria, meaningful regulator engagement and a genuine pathway for successful trials to become permanent — a tech-agnostic cross-economy sandbox can accelerate innovation, attract investment and reinforce the UK's global competitiveness, without compromising the strong consumer protections that underpin public trust.

Our positive reception is tempered by questions about how the Government will operationalise these powers in practice, including how much of the thinking developed through the previous AI Growth Labs consultation will carry across into the wider cross-economy model. The feedback provided by industry and techUK into that consultation process offers a comprehensive view of what would be required to make sandboxing powers a success, and there is a real opportunity to extend the approach to new growth sectors including AI, health technologies and advanced mobility.

The ambition to match the agility of jurisdictions like Singapore is a welcome signal, but the utility of this Bill will depend entirely on its implementation. If the "Growth Duty" remains a reporting requirement rather than a catalyst for cultural change within regulators, the UK risks ceding its technological edge to more decisive competitors.

This legislation serves as the anchor for the government’s attempt to decouple the UK from global fossil fuel volatility. By overhauling land access rules and network consenting, the Bill aims to unblock an infrastructure pipeline currently hampering the national grid - a study in administrative inertia that continues to delay the transition toward renewable generation.

For techUK, the transition to a modern, digitised energy system must be accelerated with urgency. The Bill includes steps towards levy reform, enabling the removal of charges on electricity that consumers export to the grid and allowing discounted energy at times of excess generation. While techUK sees this as a positive step in the right direction, it must now be extended to non-domestic customers. We view the most effective way to protect consumers from high energy costs to be moving all levies from electricity bills to general taxation, as this is the simplest, most effective solution in the Government’s gift. Consequently, techUK is calling for all levies to be moved to general taxation by 2029. Furthermore, while the acceleration of "smart grid" deployment is necessary, site-selection for AI compute remains constrained by connection delays. To secure the growth mission, these reforms must translate into tangible capacity, rather than just more bureaucratic paperwork.

Since 2024, the Government has attempted to place the UK’s regulatory architecture on a more pro-growth footing. This Bill goes a step further, introducing the legislative changes required to make the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) more predictable and accessible for businesses. The highlight of the reform is a departure from the "uniquely British" independent Panel model for Phase 2 investigations. By granting the CMA Board a formal role in merger and market decisions, the Government intends to introduce a clearer chain of accountability and greater consistency in outcomes - a long-standing friction point for firms navigating the UK's merger regime.

For the technology sector, the Bill’s commitment to compressing market reviews from over three years to an 18-to-24-month window is a necessary move to keep pace with fast moving digital markets. More accessible and predictable markets regime is something that techUK and the wider sector have been calling for, including in the CMA’s consultation on the subject last year.

For the technology sector, the Bill’s core is the modernisation of the Computer Misuse Act 1990. It introduces Cyber Crime Risk Orders to constrain criminal behaviour and grants law enforcement enhanced powers to recover digital evidence, alongside provisions intended to empower cybersecurity professionals to better secure systems.

Simultaneously, the Bill criminalises the creation and sharing of material glorifying extreme violence, adding another layer to the UK’s online liability regime. By aligning state threat offences with terrorism legislation—including extended sentences and new "proscription-like" tools for hostile proxies—the government is hardening the domestic perimeter. techUK supports the updating of legacy statutes like the CMA, but we remain cautious regarding the implementation of new online content offences. The challenge will be ensuring these powers do not chill legitimate security research or impose unworkable monitoring burdens on platforms already navigating a dense regulatory environment.