Burnham Pledges Long-Term Fixes for Britain, Asks Party for Patience
Andy Burnham promised to tackle Britain's deepest problems but warned results would take years, constrained by strained public finances.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham used his Labour Party conference address in Liverpool to set out a long-term plan for Britain, pledging action on social care, housing and utilities while acknowledging that stretched public finances would limit what he could deliver soon.
Speaking on Tuesday, Burnham said he had rejected the temptation of a traditional rallying speech in favour of what he called a more serious prospectus for the country. He framed the address as an honest account of the challenges ahead, with results unlikely before the next national election, due by mid-2029, and some only within a decade.
Among his commitments, Burnham said he would seek greater public control of utilities, including repealing a ban on public ownership of water companies so that households no longer bear the cost of cleaning up private firms' failures. He also promised to prioritise social housing construction, empower local councils to take over unoccupied private homes, and create a more balanced education system covering academic and technical routes.
On employment, he pledged to help bring more of the roughly one million unemployed young people into work. To fund a planned National Care Service, he said he would alter the pensions triple lock, which guarantees annual state pension increases by the highest of inflation, wage growth or 2.5%.
Burnham also said he would examine changing Britain's first-past-the-post voting system and would ask the public whether he could build consensus around a better post-Brexit relationship with the European Union.
He conceded that financial constraints curtailed immediate action, pointing to limited measures such as capping bus fares and removing value added tax from electricity bills. He said he would stick to fiscal rules to reduce borrowing and debt, describing his approach as the responsible one.
The speech turned emotional when Burnham spoke of his father, who died this month not long after his son became prime minister. With tears in his eyes, he said he would use the job to build the kind of Britain his father had wanted to see.