Queen's Speech focuses industry

The insurance industry will look at the legislative programme for Tony Blair's swansong session and probably breathe a collective sigh of relief. The list of bills in the recent Queen's Speech offers the industry the opportunity to focus its attention on a few key areas, a huge contrast to the session that has just concluded.

With legislation on compensation, fraud, uninsured driving and marine liability, and draft proposals on the ownership of law firms and pensions reform, it was a busy session with hardly a Parliamentary week passing without something for the Association of British Insurers and its fellow trade bodies to get their teeth into.

Already top of the list is the Climate Change Bill, with the ABI moving swiftly to put down a marker to demonstrate the industry's very real interest in joining this debate. It is right to do so. The insurance industry has already invested a lot of time, expertise and money into researching the impact of climate change and has a lot to contribute.

It will be as interested in short-term practical measures, such as better flood defences and the revision of new town building plans to keep major developments off flood plains, as it will in the longer term drive to reduce carbon emissions. Its interest needs to be seen as more than self interest. After all, if self interest was the dominant driver for the insurance industry in this debate, it would merely walk away from flood insurance as most of continental Europe's insurers do.

Pensions reform will again grab the attention of the retail financial services sector. If more people are to be enticed into voluntarily providing for their retirement then they need a system of pensions provision that does not need a PhD to understand, and which they can have some confidence in being around for more than five years before being ripped up and replaced with another layer of complexity.

This is a huge challenge and the discussions will reignite the debate about how much of pensions provision can be left to voluntary contribution.

Many insurers will take a keen interest in the Legal Services Bill. Although this was not mentioned in the Queen's Speech, it follows a draft Bill introduced in May. Its aim is to "ensure independent regulation of the legal profession and greater competition in the legal services market".

On the regulatory front it will establish an office of Legal Services for consumer complaints and may introduce a Legal Services Board to knock heads together in the fragmented regulatory regime currently in operation. Crucially it will also change the rules on ownership of laws firms. Do not expect insurers to go round shouting about their lobbying, they will nudge it along and then take advantage of opportunities to snap up specialist law firms once it hits the statute books.