What we know from Starmer’s first King’s Speech

Less Healthy Food & Drink ad ban

Announcements included in the King’s Speech include confirmation that the Government will legislate ”to restrict advertising of junk food to children”. Government officials have since clarified that this commitment refers to the existing  ‘less healthy food and drink’ advertising restrictions and the delayed secondary legislation that is needed to give clarity on the scope and details of the ban. 

Last week, the IAB wrote to new Ministers to encourage them to bring this secondary legislation forward and will continue to push for this to be published as soon as possible - you can read the letter below. The secondary legislation is needed to provide clarity on several crucial points including defining the products in scope of the restrictions; clarifying the definition of a SME business (which are exempt from the restrictions); and specific issues around the media in scope.

The passing of the secondary legislation is also crucial to enable Ofcom and the Advertising Standards Authority/CAP to finalise and publish guidance for the industry on what can and cannot be included in adverts from 1 October 2025 onwards, when the ban comes into effect. We will update members with more information about the secondary legislation as soon as we have it. 

Digital Information and Smart Data (DISD) Bill

In addition, the King’s Speech introduced a Digital Information and Smart Data (DISD) Bill. Given that Labour opposed many of the provisions in the previous Government’s Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) Bill that ran out of time in the last Parliament, our expectation is that the DISD Bill will look quite different to the DPDI Bill, but there will likely be some crossover such as ICO governance reforms. 

Artificial intelligence 

Despite media briefings, the speech did not include the announcement of an AI Bill. Instead, the new Government has committed to develop legislation to regulate AI -  particularly large language models - so we can expect a public consultation on the nature of a new framework for AI in due course.