Burnham Pledges Long-Term Fix for UK's Deepest Problems

Prime Minister Andy Burnham used his party's annual conference in Liverpool to promise action on some of Britain's most entrenched problems, while cautioning that progress would be slow and constrained by the public finances.

In an address he described as honest rather than the customary rallying speech, Burnham said he wanted to offer a more serious prospectus for the country than had been presented in a generation. He pledged greater public control of utilities, reform of the pensions triple lock and a major push to build social housing.

The prime minister conceded that stretched finances and tax commitments inherited from the previous government limited what he could do immediately. He said results would come only after the next national election, due by mid-2029, and in some cases within the next decade.

Burnham said he would stick to fiscal rules requiring day-to-day spending to be balanced with revenue by the end of the decade, adding that he wanted to bring borrowing and debt down. He pointed to early measures such as capping bus fares and removing value added tax from electricity bills as signs of intent while larger changes are prepared.

On housing, he promised to prioritise social housing construction and to give local councils powers to seize unoccupied private homes. On employment, he vowed to get more of the roughly one million unemployed young people into work through a more balanced education system covering academic and technical routes.

He also promised to repeal the ban on public ownership of water companies, saying households should not have to pay to clean up private firms' failings when sewage is routinely discharged into rivers and seas. The change would require legislation and could take time.

It was on social care that Burnham's emotion showed most clearly. He recounted the experiences of his father and grandmother, describing his distress at his grandmother's treatment, including the theft of her engagement ring in a care home. He said he would establish a National Care Service funded by altering the triple lock, which guarantees a state pension increase each year by whichever is highest among inflation, wage growth or 2.5%.

The populist Reform UK party criticised the plan, asking why pensioners were being asked to make sacrifices first.

Burnham also said he wanted to change Britain's first-past-the-post voting system and explore whether a consensus could be built around a better post-Brexit relationship with the European Union, though supporters acknowledged such moves would come after the expected 2029 election.

His voice caught as he described his ultimate vision for the country, recalling being told by Scotland's first minister, John Swinney, that he would be the last prime minister of the United Kingdom on the day his father died. Burnham said he would use the job to build the kind of Britain his father wanted to see.