Queen's Speech: plain cigarettes, snoopers' charter, gay marriage laws missing The Communications Data Bill, nick-named the snoopers" charter, has encountered strong resistance among Liberal Democrats and some Tory backbenchers who fear it could intrude too much on privacy. The authorities would have the power to monitor the timing and senders of emails, although not the content. The Prime Minister has also put off plans to bring in new laws formally promising to give 0.7 per cent of Britain's GDP in foreign aid. Despite the conspicious absence of many planned laws, Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, said this does not mean policies in his area have actually been abandoned. Speaking on BBC Radio Four's Today programme, he said both minimum alcohol pricing and plain cigarette packaging are still under consideration. "On minimum unit pricing, there was a court case because they are trying to do this in Scotland and that was only resolved this week and so it wasn't possible for us to actually consider what course of action to do until that was clear," he said. On plain packaging, if we do it, we will be the first country in Europe, the second country in world, Australia only introduced it in January. So it's a much harder job to assess the evidence as to how effective it will be and that takes time. And I want to make sure we do the job properly so I'm going to take the time that I need to.