The economic crisis has shaped this Queen's Speech, the last full one of the present Parliament. There will be another this time next year but, by then, we will be in the long run-in to the General Election unless, of course, Gordon Brown surprises us in the meantime.

The programme outlined today is heavily slimmed down with a number of measures that have been highlighted in recent months left out because, in the circumstances, they look irrelevant or even self-indulgent. Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, is the main sufferer on that front with his much-prized Constitutional Renewal Bill shelved, and progress towards a Bill of Rights slowed even further.

Instead Mr Brown has focused on those measures which, taken with last week's pre-Budget report, he can claim are aimed at helping ordinary families through their present and future troubles.

So there are 13 new Bills, compared with the 18 flagged up only a a few months ago. The Queen told MPs and Peers that her ministers' “overriding priority” will be “to ensure the stability of the British economy through the global economic downturn.”

Much will be made of the Banking Bill which is intended to stop banks getting into trouble but helping depositors when they do. It will also be used to try to get the banks lending again although that is a much wider task that Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, is spearheading with a mixture of exhortation and threats to banking chiefs.

Another notable absence from the draft list is a Communications Data Bill which would have paved the way for a national database of phone calls and e-mails.

Among those measures that are clearly all about the recession, local councils will be given greater decision-making power and new means to promote the economy of their area. They will also be given a legal duty to respond to petitions from the public.

The ailing construction sector is to be helped with new measures to provide a “fairer” system of commercial contracts and more cashflow.

A Welfare Reform Bill will introduce new requirements for disabled people and single parents to seek work, with the aim to cut Incapacity Benefit claimants by one million, help 300,000 lone parents and one million older people into work and achieve an all-time high employment rate of 80 per cent. The Bill will also abolish Income Support in favour of a new streamlined system of out-of-work benefits.

A Savings Gateway Accounts Bill aims to create a new financial incentive for eight million of the UK’s poorest people to save.

These are all Bills that ministers can claim are distinctly relevant to the downturn, unlike the furore over whether the police should be allowed to search an MP's office.

Lord Mandelson has gone through the Bills to consider their impact from a business perspective.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We're at a critical juncture in our economic fortunes and none of us, whether it be the government or business, can afford to under-perform.

"What we need to do is to make sure that we are aligning government policies, for example on technological development, on regulation, on skills and export promotion, in order to give the best possible backing to business and to entrepreneurs."

Meanwhile, the Department for Business says all parents with children aged 16 and under will get the right to request flexible working from April 2009, despite concerns about the impact on business. It was not in the Queen's Speech as it does not require legislation.

Lord Mandelson said he had considered delaying it but believed it would give employers and staff "valuable flexibility" and could keep businesses profitable and people in work.

So the business load is light and fairly inexpensive. The real money was spent in the PBR last week. For much of the coming year, MPs will not even be at Westminster, with the total number of sitting days one of the lowest of modern times. Mr Brown has steered away from BIlls that will cause him too much trouble with his backbenchers as he seeks to gear them up for an election that he insists is not yet a lost cause.

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