The government will allow regulators to curb excessive bank bonuses as part of a series of new laws unveiled in the Queen's Speech.
Ministers will also promise a bill mandating the government to halve its budget deficit within four years.
Other measures include a social care bill and an energy bill giving Ofgem more powers to keep prices down.
The government plans to challenge extravagant City remuneration through the financial services bill, which would give the Financial Services Authority the power to ban the bonuses of bankers who take "reckless" and "excessive" risks.
The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have dismissed the package as little more than an early Labour manifesto and point out that with an election due by June 2010, few of the pledges will become law.
Lord Strathclyde, the shadow leader of the House of Lords, told the Guardian that Tory peers would be prepared to prevent many of the bills from reaching the statute book.
"We all know that this Queen's speech is all about better electioneering and politics rather than the better governance of the country," he said.
"If these measures were so important they would have been in the legislative programme last year rather than being left to the last moment of the fifth term. That does not suggest they have the greatest priority or urgency."
But Harriet Harman, the leader of the Commons, insisted that "most" of the proposed bills would be passed before the next election.
She said: "I don't think it is right that we should be clocking-off now before a general election, which probably won't be until next year."
Conservative leader David Cameron has criticised the Queen's Speech as the "most divisive, short-termist, shamelessly self-serving" one in "living memory".
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has similarly accused the government of "hijacking" the Queen's Speech for explicitly "political ends".
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