The announcement of the draft Animal Health Responsibility and Cost Sharing Bill will be of particular interest to the farming community. This bill will create mechanisms of how responsibilities and costs can be shared between government and the farming industry for animal disease control. Following on from the June 16th Digital Britain White Paper the programme also laid out plans for a Digital Economy Bill. This will deliver universally available broadband throughout the UK by 2012.

The Prime Minister also placed plenty of emphasis on climate change strategy, during his statement announcing that the government will publish a comprehensive Climate Change and Energy White Paper. This will include details of the their renewable energy strategy (15% of energy coming from renewable sources by 2020) as well as a new funding mechanism to support up to four carbon capture and storage demonstration projects.

There will also be details of a new feed-in tariff and renewable heat incentive to promote household and community-based energy generation and strategies to reduce carbon emissions from transport, waste management and land use. The leader of the opposition David Cameron applauded some of the issues announced like carbon capture and storage but claimed that the rest of the programme was a repeat on previous years.

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