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On the eve of the Queen's Speech we were treated to the sight of work and pensions secretary David Blunkett trying to appear conciliatory as he prepared the ground for some of the harshest welfare reform legislation since 1997. It may be that his new, more consultative mood will soothe some of the critics, but the underlying aim to shift up to one million incapacity benefit claimants into work will do nothing to help disabled people enjoy the "culture of respect" to which the government aspires.


Ministers may have to reinvent themselves to cope with the realities of the new House of Commons, where a revolt by a mere 34 Labour MPs would be enough to overturn the government's best laid plans, but the 45 bills announced in the speech are a vehicle for the same old policies. Tough on much more than benefits, the government also set out yet again to be tough on immigration, tough on crime and tough even on mental illness as the highly restrictive Mental Health Bill made another comeback. And then there were steps to give schools more power to acquire foundation status or become city academies with private investment and influence.

There is little comfort here for social care. Disabled people will be justifiably angry that the Department for Work and Pensions has dressed up its determination to get substantially more of them into jobs as a benign attempt to create employment opportunities. Asylum seekers are likely to suffer even greater indignities as the government fulfils its pledge to throw more of them out of the country.

People with mental health problems will find their civil liberties still more curtailed, while schools will become harder to enlist in support of vulnerable children and the extended schools programme as they become still more independent of local education authorities.

But it was not all bad. The much-liked Charities Bill returned and the Queen also mentioned, in her speech written by Downing Street, that her government was committed to "promoting efficiency, productivity and value for money". That should mean less red tape and, almost inevitably, targets for scrapping targets.