Queen's speech leaked a day ahead in Britain

A late draft of the speech, obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, said that the Government would spell out an ambitious programme of at least 21 Bills to be introduced in the next 18 months including one for scrapping plans for ID cards.

A radical programme of political reform will get under way in the following weeks.
The speech has "freedom, fairness and responsibility" as its main themes and contains many key policies demanded by the Liberal Democrats as the price for their entry into the coalition government.

The measures to be announced include a Parliamentary Reform Bill as well as Nick Clegg's long-cherished "Great Repeals Bill", containing measures which he has said would represent the biggest constitutional shake-up in 200 years.

These plans are likely to alarm many Tory MPs and activists. Five of the Bills will be led by the Treasury under George Osborne, reaffirming the Tory Chancellor's primacy over Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Business secretary, whose department is almost absent from the draft list.

Osborne and David Laws, his Lib Dem deputy at the Treasury, will tomorrow announce details of 6 billion pounds in "emergency" savings in government spending to be made this year - including 513 million pounds from cutting funding to various programmes.