Reactions from Westminster’s wonks are in. Free market think tanks view the whopping 40 bills as a mixed bag…

The Adam Smith Institute’s Maxwell Marlow calls it “a case of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Planning reforms “if executed properly” could get Britain building alongside “welcome relief” of leasehold and commonhold reform, and the legalisation of the sale of lab grown meat. The ASI criticises the smoking ban, dubbed a “black market charter“, and decries the VAT on private schools for “actually costing taxpayers and causing chaos as pupils leave their independent schools“. Employment rights changes will add “constraints” on businesses, while tinkering around venue and regulatory changes are “further worrying signs that this is a government that will expand the size and scope of the regulatory state.” Bureaucratic creep will ensue…

John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, says “taxpayers will be deeply disappointed by a legislative programme that fiddles with everything while fixing nothing… the agenda is dominated by low-priority issues and nakedly disastrous proposals, from a race equality bill to banning smoking, a football regulator and VAT on private schools.” Cutting…

The Centre for Policy Studies focuses on planning. Its Head of Housing, Samuel Hughes, says it is “welcome to see the Government being ambitious in its proposals, but these are only first steps. Only a full suite of reforms across policy and guidance will give the country any chance of seeing a housebuilding boom on the scale we so desperately need.” YIMBY appetites have been whetted…

Institute of Economic Affairs Executive Director Tom Clougherty welcomes planning changes but warns “pro-growth measures risk being held back by new red tape and risky ‘mission-led’ central planning.” He targets the North Sea oil and gas ban and a stack of new regulations, which will “reduce flexibility and increase structural unemployment” while nationalisations are “fraught with the risks of wasted taxpayer money, trade union dominance, and cronyism.”

Now the UK is well and truly state-led again, the outcomes of these projects rely on the actions of the government and its managers. It will go the same as always.