The prime minister moves on to borders and immigration next.

He says the government will crack down on criminal gangs that profiteer from people trafficking.

Crime falls disproportionately on the poorest areas of society, he says, and the Police and Sentencing Bill will ensure crimes are dealt effectively.

He says the police will have the powers to deal with disruptive protests.

And he insists the interests of victims will be paramount with tougher sentences for serious sexual offences.

Image source, HoC

The PM says it is essential to have a "full, proper Covid inquiry" in to the pandemic and that will happen in this Parliament .

He says he has "been clear with the House before" that this will happen.

Johnson references the recent elections and thanks "everyone who has put their trust in the Conservatives, many for the first time".

He jests with Labour's deputy leader, Angela Rayner, listing the various new jobs she now has despite Labour leader Keir Starmer wanting to demote her.

The PM says the people we serve have every right to hold us to account, and we will "get on with protecting the health of the nation".

He says the government will bring forward proposals on adult social care later in the year, "so that every person receives the dignity and security they deserve in old age”.

The prime minister is on his feet.

He starts by praising the Covid vaccination programme that is "bringing life back" to towns and cities - we can "feel the pent up energy", he says.

The PM says we look ahead to pubs serving customers inside from next Monday and we look forward to a "bounce forward".

That's what this Queen's Speech will do, he says, with a new focus on skills, broadband, fighting crime and home ownership.

"We intend to level up" because one-nation Conservatives believe opportunity needs to be shared out across the country, he says.

Johnson says: "jabs, jabs, jabs needs to become jobs, jobs, jobs"

Reality Check

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has just said government plans to introduce voter ID "will suppress turnout in elections and weaken democracy".

Earlier, Conservative MP and skills minister Gillian Keegan was explaining on BBC News why voters should be required to show identification at polling stations.

“If I go to collect a parcel at the Post Office now, I need to take my driving licence or my passport,” she said.

Actually, the Post Office, external has a long list of forms of identification it accepts, including a credit card, utility bill or marriage certificate.

The new system for voter ID is expected to be similar to the existing system in Northern Ireland, where photo ID is needed.

Passports, driving licences, various passes for public transport provider Translink and the free electoral identity cards are all accepted at polling stations.

You can read more about the issue of voter ID here.

The Labour leader finishes his speech saying the Election Integrity Bill "will make it harder for people to vote" and he says such measures will "suppress turnout, disproportionately affect minorities and weaken democracy".

He asks where is the legislation to fix "our broken lobbying laws," and says he can see why the prime minister doesn't have fixing lobbying as a priority "considering the state of his finances".

Starmer says the Labour party is always prepared to work together with the government to end violence against women and girls. And he says progress "has been promised for nearly two years" on protecting the UK against hostile states.

He concludes by turning to social care, and urges the government to spend time after the coronavirus pandemic to "solve the social care crisis, clean up our politics, clean up the mess of the past decade."

He says the government's plan is "a chance that's been squandered".

Starmer continues his response, saying he knows it is only through "world class skills investment" that Britain will be able to lead in vocational skills going into the 2030s.

On crime and policing, he says recorded violent crime has doubled since 2015, and anti-social behaviour has gone up in every area of England and Wales.

"Our courts now have a record backlog, meaning victims waiting years to get justice," he adds.

He says home ownership has dropped, and house building targets "are almost never hit" and he "sees nothing in this Speech which will tackle this".

"The Grenfell tragedy was four years and three Queen's Speeches ago, and yet thousands of people are still trapped in dangerous buildings" he adds.

"There is no excuse for the prime minister's inaction on cladding," he adds.

Image source, HoC

Starmer says the speech "pits regions against each other by competing for small pots of money," and he says after eleven years of Conservative government "we are 124th out of 126 countries on the scale of capital investment".

People in Britain are working for longer, for lower pay, he says, there needs to be a "game changing employment bill to end fire and rehire, to give proper rights to every worker from day one" and to introduce a "proper living wage" which he says would have raised the wages of millions.

There also should have been a "long term recovery plan" for the record waiting lists on the NHS. He says it is "unforgivable that there is no long term plan to fix social care".

He says it has been 657 days since Boris Johnson pledged to fix "the crisis in social care".

Turning the the substance of his response to the Queen's Speech, Sir Keir says: "most shockingly, life expectancy stalled for the first time in a century" and he says this is the record "the prime minister is trying to run away from today".

He says if you "are one of the millions of people who are one paycheck away from hardship, then this pandemic will have hit you the worst".

He says the Queen's Speech is "packed with short term gimmicks" and "distant promises". He says it is "papering over the cracks".

He says there should have been a jobs plan "at the centre" of the speech. He says America is showing the way by introducing a green growth plan after the pandemic.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer pays tribute to the Queen, to say this speech "must have been one of the hardest" for her having recently lost her husband, Prince Philip.

He thanks Shailesh Vara for opening the debate, saying he can see why he was once labelled a rising star of the Conservative Party.

He also thanks Katherine Fletcher for her seconding of the debate, saying she must be the only member of Parliament who has survived being charged at by a rhino. He says he believes she must be the only MP who is a registered safari leader.

He also pays tribute to Dame Cheryl Gillan MP, who passed away in April, and congratulates Jill Mortimer on winning the seat of Hartlepool for the Tories. He says she has "the huge honour of representing that great town" and adds: " I hope she will forgive me if I say, I hope for not too long."

Laughing, he asks: "I wonder what plans she has for the forty-foot inflatable of the prime minster?"

Image source, HoC

Conservative backbencher Katherine Fletcher is the seconder for the Loyal Address.

She says the Queen is "still flipping ace" despite a difficult year.

The pandemic has been awful for all of us, she says, and more than anything we have missed contact with other people.

These empty seats in the chamber "should be occupied by a seething wall of humanity" but social distancing has prevented that, she adds.

As an MP elected in 2019, it is no surprise she focuses on the so-called levelling up agenda.

People need better infrastructure, buses and broadband, she says, to create well-paid jobs in local economies.

"The plans to reform planning will help ensure all our children can afford homes and green spaces are protected."

She says her cohort has "bounded in to politics like spaniels in to a wood" but the "grey-chinned dogs" are needed too.

We're passionate about our home towns and our communities, she says.

The Conservatives have "kick-ass ladies" and "lovely mums" in their team and when the so-called 'red wall' Tories go out for a drink, they revel in diversity she adds.

Immigration plan breaks international law says UNpublished at 15:06 British Summer Time 11 May 2021

15:06 BST 11 May 2021

Dominic Casciani
Home and Legal Correspondent

As we briefly mentioned in the previous post, the Queen's Speech includes well-trailed plans for a "fairer immigration system that strengthens United Kingdom's borders".

The United Nations' refugee agency says that, in its current form, a core proposal breaks international law that the UK freely signed up to.

That's because it treats people seeking asylum from persecution differently, depending solely on how they arrive in the UK, rather than the merits of their claim for protection.

Anyone who comes spontaneously - for instance clandestinely in the back of a lorry or making a claim after flying into Heathrow - may be thrown out.

Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor, the UN's refugee representative to the UK, says: “We recognise the need to improve some asylum procedures, but these plans threaten to create a discriminatory two-tier asylum system, undermining the 1951 Refugee Convention and longstanding global cooperation on refugee issues. It’s not too late for a rethink."

The UN's analysis is backed by many experts in the field and other agencies, such as the UK's Refugee Council.

"It's great to see that the UK is leading the world in initiatives to help the environment," Shailesh Vara continues his speech.

He says he welcomes the measures in the bill to reform immigration, deal with people smugglers and to make the internet safer.

"This House is at its best when we work together," he tells MPs, "we may differ in our approach, but our aim is the same."

He says MPs from both sides of the House have experienced poverty and inequality, and he urges MPs to aim less for personal attacks and more for engagement.

Image source, HoC

Conservative Shailesh Vara is moving the Queen's Speech, so the debate can start.

He says "it is a great honour and privilege for me and my constituents to move this loyal address."

He says the Queen's commitment to her nation is an example to all of us.

"We meet at time unprecedented in our history, a time when there is a dark shadow, not only in our country but across the globe," he states, referring to the pandemic.

He says "heartbreaking scenes on our televisions from India are a reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe".

He jokingly refers to the 17 speeches he has not been able to give to the House of Commons in the past year, due to virtual contributions and limited timing of MPs' debates, and mentions that he should start making them now.

He says he moved to the UK as a child, and his upbringing was difficult in Birmingham, as his family frequently experienced discrimination based on their heritage. At the time, he says, it was still legal to discriminate based on race.

For someone from his background to be moving the Queen's Speech, "shows what a truly great and magnificent country we all live in", he says.

He says the Queen's Speech "delivers for working people."

Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has called on backbench Conservative MP Shailesh Vara to open the debate on the Queen's Speech.

We'll bring you the contributions here.

Image source, HoC

Conservative Jill Mortimer has just taken the oath in the Commons - which officially makes her the new MP for Hartlepool.

Mortimer defeated Labour rival Paul Williams by nearly 7,000 votes in Thursday's by-election.

The Hartlepool constituency was formed in 1974 and had returned a Labour MP in every vote since.

Speech fails to 'grasp the nettle' on social carepublished at 14:31 British Summer Time 11 May 2021

14:31 BST 11 May 2021

Jonathan Blake
BBC political correspondent

A lot is riding on the so-called levelling up white paper, draft legislation which the government is going to put forward later in the year.

It will be scrutinised heavily, not least by a lot of new Conservative backbench MPs from those former Labour seats, to see exactly where the money is coming from and where it is going to in those constituencies.

The gaping hole for a lot of the government's critics is social care.

Boris Johnson promised in his first day in office to sort out social care in England - to fix the problem once and for all.

We're still waiting for that. Of course the pandemic got in the way.

There is a big debate going on in government, and proposals will be brought forward later in this parliamentary session.

But it seems the nettle has yet to be grasped by ministers in terms of how it is going to be paid for and how the system will work.

Number 10 has judges in its sightspublished at 14:14 British Summer Time 11 May 2021

14:14 BST 11 May 2021

Dominic Casciani
Home and Legal Correspondent

Image source, PA Media

The Queen's Speech confirms there will be legislation to "restore the balance of power between the executive, legislature, and the courts."

Some on the Tory right say judges are acting like the unofficial opposition, overturning government decisions because they don't like them, rather than because they're illegal.

The problem is that the evidence for this is pretty elusive - as confirmed by both statistics and the government's handpicked panel that carried out an independent review.

So critics believe the "balance" plan is a thinly-veiled plot to neuter judges by making some ministerial decisions unchallengeable.

That, they say, is "Boris's Revenge" after he received his almighty Supreme Court slap-down for illegally closing Parliament in 2019.

Lord Reed, the president of the Supreme Court, has sedately warned that downgrading his institution would be "widely perceived as an act of spite", external. Many in the judiciary and legal establishment share his concerns.

If politicians weaken the courts' role in overseeing government, they predict it will damage justice at home and make it harder for the UK to tell unpleasant regimes around the world to clean up their own act.

In just under half and hour, the Commons will start six days of debate on the government's legislative agenda, set out in today's Queen's Speech.

The Lords will also hold debates on the speech.

Formally, the debates discuss the motion: 'That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty' thanking her for the speech.

But, in reality, it is an opportunity for MPs and Peers to discuss the content of the speech.

According to Parliament's website, opening the debate - or moving the motion - in the Commons is regarded as an honour, and the job is usually given to two government backbenchers.

By convention, the chosen MPs represent two very different constituencies. One is usually a relative newcomer and the other a long-serving member. Their speeches are not contentious and contain both humour and flattering references to their constituencies.

Today, the task goes to Conservatives Shailesh Vara, MP for for North West Cambridgeshire, and Katherine Fletcher, MP for South Ribble in Lancashire.

After the motion has been moved, the leader of the opposition and the prime minister give their opening speeches.

Reality Check

The Queen's Speech includes a plan to require people to show an approved form of identification in order to vote. The government document cites Northern Ireland where voters have to show photo ID at polling stations.

The government says this would "tackle electoral fraud" and give voters "confidence that their vote is theirs, and theirs alone".

So, how widespread is the problem?

There are very few complaints about electoral fraud in the UK - and even fewer convictions.

In 2019, there were:

• an estimated 47 million people registered to vote
• 33 allegations of "personation" - the offence of pretending to be somebody else to vote
• one conviction and one caution

You can read more here.