Tag: Andy Burnham

  • Andy Burnham – 2026 Speech in Scotland

    Andy Burnham – 2026 Speech in Scotland

    The speech made by Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, in Motherwell, Scotland on 16 October 2026.

    It’s great to be with you. Thanks to the college, as Douglas says, for having us. 

    It’s good to be back in Scotland, to be here in Motherwell. 

    And I should say – I’m going to say this now, but I might regret it – the true north!

    Please don’t tell anyone in Manchester that I said that.

    You know I’ve created Number 10 North? Are you aware of that? Have you heard of that?

    I know here you’ll probably call it Number 10 South. 

    And then you’ve got now Number 10 South South. 

    So you’re going to have to have your own way now of describing it. 

    But it is brilliant to be here. 

    I was in Scotland for the Opening Ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in the summer and, can I say, what a job Glasgow did in stepping forward to host it. Really grateful to them, did it brilliantly.  

    I’m actually here more than you might think. I sneak into Scotland without you knowing. I was here between Christmas and New Year last year for Hibs-Hearts and it has not escaped my notice that Motherwell are currently above the former in the SPL. 

    Although, well I think there are some Motherwell supporters here, surely. I hope there are. 

    I care about Scotland and I am coming today with a big offer and in search of common ground.

    When I walked into Downing Street in July, I said I wanted to do politics differently. Place-first not party-first. 

    Honestly, I meant it. I meant it and I arrive here in that spirit because people in Scotland, in my view, deserve better from politicians and politics, as they do all over the UK, to be honest.

    So that’s why I’m here. I’m here in that spirit because I want to show that politics can be better and we can work in a different way, place first, not party first. 

    And I want to say something so Scotland understands this. 

    I left Westminster in 2017 to become the first Mayor of Greater Manchester because I had come to see quite clearly how Westminster didn’t work for the North of England, North West of England as well. 

    My work on Hillsborough had brought me to the same conclusion that Scotland had reached many years before us.

    And I felt the same frustrations as Scotland, Scottish ministers, in my ten years as the mayor, because often the way we were treated wasn’t right, it wasn’t good enough. 

    So I want everyone in Scotland to know that my reason in going back to Westminster is not to carry on with the same old Westminster and Whitehall ways and go back to that, I’m going back to change all of that. That’s why I’m Prime Minister. 

    When I say I want good growth in every postcode, that means every single postcode in Scotland as well.

    And what that requires is giving more power to people and places everywhere to change more things for themselves.

    One of the most important examples of this that I have seen came not from Manchester but from somewhere not so far from here. 

    In August 2023, with the help of the ground-breaking Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, I visited FARE-Scotland at Bannatyne House in Easterhouse with the Greater Manchester Violence Reduction Unit.

    And we went because we’d heard all of the reports about what was happening, and the innovation that they were doing in Easterhouse. 

    Many of our communities had the same challenges – unfairly labelled and, you know, given a certain reputation – and that kind of hangs over. 

    But we had picked up on the stories that were coming out of things that were being done to turn people’s lives around. 

    So we went to see. 

    I had expected to spend two hours there talking about policing, drugs and violence.

    Instead, we only talked about empowerment and opportunity.

    The need to stop communities being labelled and defined by the negatives and instead to celebrate their positives and the assets that they’ve got.

    It was an amazing time. I’ll never forget it. 

    And also we talked about how to create personal pathways, very personal pathways, for each young person, individually tailored for them, working with local employers.

    And then to help those young people take those chances up to get them the right clothes so they didn’t feel out of place when they were going to those opportunities and those appointments, or those interviews, and have their travel covered as well. 

    It was something I’d never really heard explained in quite that way before. 

    It was true extra mile, bottom-up, person-centred support.

    Rooted in local values.

    Run by the local community and the people on the estate.

    And it worked.

    Well, why wouldn’t it work? It would work, wouldn’t it, if you run things like that. That’s how they should be done. 

    So I took everything I heard that day from Easterhouse and I took it back to Greater Manchester and I used it to pioneer what we called the Live Well model in Greater Manchester.

    It was all about moving away from top-down, tick box systems that no one trusts and sometimes can make people feel worse about themselves, not better, when they’ve interacted with that system. 

    It was about moving away from the often patronising approach of public services so powerfully described by Darren McGarvey in his book Poverty Safari. And if you haven’t read it, I would recommend it to you. 

    And it pointed towards a new approach based on trusting local communities, and let them sort things out for themselves, because they know the solutions that they need.  

    And lo and behold, just as Easterhouse had done, we began to achieve more for people than we could have imagined before through Live Well. 

    So I carry all of that learning with me into my time as Prime Minister, and I am really clear about the changes I want to see. 

    When I walked up Downing Street and into No10, I was determined to push power out of it – and into the hands of local people. That’s what this country needs, in my view, all over it. In all of the regions, in all of the nations. 

    To rewire the state, rewire it so that it works right across the UK, and every postcode is empowered to do more for itself. 

    So I will do that because in the past we saw too many people, too many places written off, powerless to fight the effects of deindustrialisation. 

    And I don’t think I need to say that in this room today, with the history that there is on this site with regards to the effects of deindustrialisation. 

    I don’t want anyone ever to be in the position again that this community was in 30 or so years ago. 

    And it’s the reason I wanted to come to Motherwell today.

    The story of this area and this town gets to the heart of why I believe we need to do things differently.

    You know, it’s important to talk to Pamela today as the local MP to understand that history, but also to understand how those challenges are still there, and we know they’re very real challenges, and we want to be able to empower people here to be able to do more, to soften the effects of those things, find new solutions.

    What you have here is a proud manufacturing past, and the apprentices who are with us today are obviously taking that tradition forward, and we’re proud of you, and we know you’ll go on to do great things. 

    But you’ve been let down. Certainly young people in all parts of the UK have been let down by political choices made far away from here. 

    By people often who have no clue, really, about what life is like here. 

    So that is basically the history. 

    You know, in the past, if you think about this area, if Britain was building something big the fair chance was the steel would have come from here. 

    You know, it was the heart of an industrial Britain. 

    And this college, I think I’m right in saying, is on the very site where Ravenscraig once stood. 

    And in my youth, if I go back to the 70s and 80s, you couldn’t not hear that name, Ravenscraig, on the news, such was its massive importance to the country. 

    When it closed, it wasn’t just a works that shut.

    It was a whole community which saw the pillars underneath it just taken away, collapse beneath it. 

    And that was a decision taken hundreds of miles away by people, without any real consequences for what that would mean for people here. 

    Taken by people who would never have to live with those consequences and see those consequences every day. 

    And more than thirty years on, I know that work is still ongoing to fill the Ravenscraig site, such is the hole that it left.  

    And I know that story myself, as well. 

    Because I represented a former mining community, Leigh in the old Lancashire coalfield, and I was the MP there for sixteen years from the early 2000s, just after the pits had shut in the 1990s.

    It broke my heart to see the old miners shuffling into my surgery every week carrying oxygen bottles still struggling to get compensation for the damage that was done to their lungs

    It pained me to drive past the wasteland around Bickershaw Colliery, one of the last pits to close in Leigh.

    Nobody asked Leigh what was going to come next either.

    No one in Whitehall went to Leigh and said, “Here’s what we’re going to do with transition”. Just gone. 

    And this is the way the UK has been run in our lifetimes, and it’s what needs to change.

    It took so much, this country, from Motherwell and its people in terms of the building of Britain. 

    And it took so much from Leigh in terms of the powering of Britain, and then just abandoned them when life moved on.

    So I am here today to spell out how I plan to do things differently as Prime Minister in all parts of the UK.

    Taking power out of the centre, and putting it into places like this, empowering people. 

    Because that to me  is just as important in Scotland as it is anywhere else in the UK.

    All of the nations that make up the UK, including Scotland, are too unequal internally. 

    Like in England, public transport in Scotland is way better in the capital of Scotland than it is in any other city or town in Scotland. 

    Or if you look at high streets. 

    If you go to Edinburgh today, you’ll see around one in twenty shops lying empty.

    But if you go to Dundee, it’s more likely one in five.

    Again, not an accident.

    It’s what happens when too many of the good jobs go.

    When the spending power reduces, and then obviously the high streets suffer and the shops go. 

    And people in Aberdeen are living through that now, and they’re very much on my mind, and I’ll have more to say about that in due course. 

    If you look at population in Scotland, there are places that haven’t grown like the rest of Scotland, where if you say in the West like Inverclyde, the working population has shrunk.

    And why? It’s because it’s what happens when young people can’t see a future for themselves in those areas, and then they move away to find it.

    And this one should really give us pause for thought: life expectancy.

    It’s wonderful to see the emphasis being put in this college, if I could say this to the principal, on brain health. 

    Really asking every student to think about health. 

    I think that’s such a powerful message that you’re sending. 

    But the truth is we need to do that because the health inequalities are still far too wide. 

    A man in East Renfrewshire can live, as I understand, on average seven years longer than a man in Glasgow, even though there is only ten miles between the two places. 

    It’s the same elsewhere, in all parts of the country. 

    You can just go a few miles and you can see the housing change, you can see the community change, and of course you can see then the health of the people is not what it should be. 

    And when people live in a country like that, where it doesn’t feel fair place to place, that’s what then creates the divides that people see, and then it damages people’s trust, and they don’t feel the country is fair to all people and to all places. 

    Because when you’ve watched the works go, when you’ve watched the jobs go, the high street become empty, and one government after another tell you that things will get better, why should anybody believe any of us?

    And it means we’ve got to change first. Politicians have to change. 

    Write a new script, do things very differently, because it’s not been working, what we’ve been doing. 

    We spend a lot of time focusing on the differences between Scotland and England.

    But what is perhaps more striking is how similar the problems in places across Scotland and England.  

    The same cost-of-living pressures and lack of good jobs.

    The same huge gaps between the regions.

    The same decline sometimes seen on the high streets. 

    And the same sense that where you live still has too much bearing on your life as a whole.

    And the issue was never the regions themselves. 

    They never lacked potential.

    Ambition…

    Talent…

    Drive.

    It’s just that the country, at a national level – UK level, Holyrood level – has not often shared the same ambitions of those places and empowered them to achieve those ambitions. 

    For decades, the centre sown in London has looked past too many places.

    And hasn’t trusted people in those places to make their own decisions about their future.

    And that centre has also refused to give up power when it’s been asked to do so. It’s kept hold of the power even when places across the country have been desperate for more ability to do more for themselves. 

    Twenty-seven years on, you led the way on devolution here in Scotland with the creation of the Scottish Parliament.

    And that was absolutely right.

    But devolution was never meant to stop there.

    It was never supposed to stop at the doors of the Scottish Parliament.

    Obviously, there’s huge progress to look back on. 

    Public control of water…

    Public ownership of rail…

    Free personal care…

    And these are all Issues very close to my own heart, and I applaud them…

    But they were always meant – as I understand it, because I was in Parliament, as Douglas said, at the time with him – always meant to be the start of something deeper.

    The foundations of a nation where communities had more of a say in their own future…

    And where the norm was always to push power out until it reached every person and every post code.

    Instead, we’ve ended up with the situation where Scotland, the most devolved nation in the UK, is itself one of the most centralised nations in Europe.

    And I don’t say that to score points.

    Genuinely, I don’t. 

    I say that because I believe we need to be honest about that if we really want to get growth in every post code, if we really want to renew every part of the United Kingdom. 

    That’s why one of the first things I did as Prime Minister was start shifting that power out of Westminster.

    And already we’re giving local leaders in England more power and control over transport…

    More say over skills and investment…

    More freedom to build an economy around the strengths of their communities.

    We’re finally making the centre work for people…

    Rather than asking them to work around us.

    And this is what I mean by devolution by default, and deep devolution. 

    Not swapping power from one parliament to another…

    But going deeper.

    Putting power down into the regions…

    Control back into the hands of the local people who know how to use it best.

    And as our English regions see the benefits…

    I want those same opportunities for Scotland and Scottish regions.

    The chance to stop looking back what was once here…

    And start looking forward to what’s coming next.

    And that does mean something different for both governments, the UK government and the Scottish government. 

    This is the heart of what I wanted to say to you today. 

    It means working together in a different way and backing places in a different way across Scotland, and giving them the necessary investment to bring forward a new vision for the reindustrialisation of Scotland that these young people who are with us today can feel hopeful about. 

    It is great that the Scottish government has this week agreed to match the UK government’s £10 million to create two defence technical excellence colleges, and Douglas informed me of that news today. 

    So there will be one in the east and one in the west. 

    That’s an example, I think, of how it should be done. 

    The UK government and the Scottish government making something bigger than it might otherwise have been if one of them had done it alone. 

    And credit to Douglas and John Swinney for working together on that. 

    It means Scots trained for well-paid, skilled jobs in a defence sector that already supports 12,000 jobs here in Scotland

    My government’s job is to do whatever we can to support more of those high ambitions in every part of Scotland.

    It’s why we’re backing Scottish shipbuilding.

    It’s why we’re working with the Scottish government to help secure new investment and new opportunities for the Grangemouth site. And we will keep working hard at that. 

    And it’s why we are committed to ensuring the next generation of energy jobs, created right here in Scotland.

    Because I know how much these industries matter to people.

    To workers.

    To their families.

    And to the communities they have built around them.

    It’s also why I am working on a new deal for food and farming at the EU-UK Summit on the 20th of November. 

    I am working closely with our EU partners in relation to that. Why? Because it would have hugely beneficial impacts on the food industry and farming here in Scotland.

    And it is why I want to see a change in public procurement across the UK and working with the devolved governments, the same there.

    When I was Mayor of Greater Manchester, I put buses back under public control, and it meant I had the ability to choose where the buses we bought were built, and I chose Scotland.

    I chose to back Scottish manufacturing. 

    I rejected the old Whitehall way of always going to find the cheapest contract anywhere in the world, because I recognised if you paid even a little more, it would still have circular benefits for British communities. 

    So I was determined that the buses on the roads of Greater Manchester today were built by Alexander Dennis in Falkirk. 

    And I did that because I knew it would sustain those communities. And Euan was there with me when we announced some of those contracts. 

    I want all public procurement in the UK to work like that, to follow the same approach and back a plan, a solid plan, to reindustrialise all of Britain. 

    But, from there, we have to allow our own regions to forge their own future, and that means Westminster and Holyrood learning to let go and make decisions about what comes next themselves.

    The good news is Scotland’s regions already have so many strengths to build on.

    In Dundee, you’ve got a world-leading video games industry.

    Across the Highlands and the Islands, you’re building a new space industry, with new launch sites emerging.

    In Edinburgh, a thriving fintech sector.

    The list goes on.

    Imagine what more places could achieve if they had greater control and investment to help those businesses grow.

    If the people who understood those industries best had more say over where the money went, and which opportunities they went after, they would be building more stronger technical education paths, education paths into their emerging sectors.

    We’ve already seen glimpses of what that can look like.

    An approach that puts local businesses, universities and councils in the driving seat has seen companies like Chemify turn groundbreaking research into real manufacturing jobs in Glasgow.

    And that’s the sort of thing I want to see so much more of.

    It’s why we’re putting a billion pounds into research and innovation across the UK in the coming years.

    But I don’t want all the decisions about where that money goes being made in Whitehall.

    We’re already giving English mayors more control over funding for local innovation.

    And I want to explore now how Scotland’s regions can have the same powers to decide where more of that research and development investment goes. 

    Because the people building these industries, they know where those industries can go in the future. 

    Our job isn’t to stand in their way…

    It’s to give them what they need to go after those opportunities.

    And there’s one more thing.

    Because none of this means very much if the people growing up in these communities don’t get the chance to take up the opportunities that come out of it.

    We can announce all the investment we like and all of the big numbers. 

    We can build factories…

    We can win contracts…

    We can create new businesses.

    But if a young person down the road growing up here can’t get the skills or support they need to work there…

    Then we haven’t got it right.

    And right now, too many young people are missing out.

    I mean, none of us feel comfortable about these statistics, and it’s the same in England, I’m not pointing the finger at Scotland. 

    But the fact is around one in six young people here are not in education, employment or training.

    It just isn’t right, is it? It isn’t good enough. 

    All of those young people experiencing that feeling of less hope and not having a sense of direction for the future. 

    I’ve been clear that care for people is at the heart of everything that I’m about and what my government will do.

    And I won’t have a country where we get comfortable with the idea of kids in their 20s just being there on benefits. 

    I won’t. I never will accept that some are just written off, given the feeling that they don’t matter or they’re not seen. 

    I don’t believe the answer is another scheme designed in the centre – another top-down scheme – and then kind of imposed on every community in the way that we’ve done it in the past. 

    It won’t work again. We’ve heard it before. 

    The review led by Alan Milburn is challenging us to look at this very differently.

    To build a system based on the Easterhouse principle of names not numbers.

    Build it from the bottom up. 

    Let communities build it. They know best. 

    And this is what I’m here to say. I think the time has come for deeper devolution in Scotland to empower all of the proud places across this wonderful nation, every single bit of it. 

    More power to do more, and that unlocks a feeling of positivity that you can do something to change the place where you live. 

    That’s what I want to see. More power to give people the support they need to access opportunities as they become available in new industries.

    And, crucially, treat them as an individual.

    I come back to that phrase, names not numbers.

    That’s what you can do when you work from the bottom up, as they did in Easterhouse. 

    You can just think about the person in front of you, not sometimes the “computer says no” approach where you just give them bad news. 

    Come at it a different way, see what they’ve got, and then help them unlock all of that potential.

    Don’t see them as a problem to be managed via a programme designed and implemented from Westminster or Holyrood. 

    Because the barriers a young person faces in Glasgow, they won’t necessarily be the same as someone growing up in the Highlands.

    And the opportunities in Dundee won’t be the same as those in Lanarkshire. That’s just a fact. 

    I want to work with the Scottish government and Scottish local government to join up colleges, employers, employment support and local services.

    And just like Scotland did in Easterhouse.

    And just like we did in Greater Manchester, let’s create a new way of supporting people. 

    That’s the vision everybody. I hope it resonates: a revitalised Scotland in a reindustrialised UK, where every region plays their part, and there are new paths for people in every post code across the UK.

    I want all areas of Scotland to be part of that and to feel the possibility that they can be part of that, to play their part. 

    And I open out a hand to the Scottish government, perhaps not in a way that people in my job have come and done in the past, but I do. 

    Because I am long in my political career now, and I know enough now to know that tribal politics and point-scoring in the end doesn’t get you anywhere  

    Politicians like to do it, but the public can’t bear it because it just doesn’t work. 

    Problem-solving, not point-scoring is what I said when I walked up Downing Street and I mean it, and I’m going to stick to it. And you can all hold me to account on it. 

    I know progress has been made here over the last decade with the City Region Deals.

    But it is time to think about what comes next.

    And how we build on them for the next generation.

    We need to look at the resources and decision-making powers that sit at the regional level in Scotland so that no Scottish city regions are left behind.

    And I know the Scottish government has also announced a long-term programme for local government reform.

    But, if you ask me, we’ve got to move faster and we’ve got to do more. 

    Growth won’t wait. 

    And if we don’t move now, Scotland could lose out. 

    There is a risk that some of the towns and the cities become underpowered when some of the towns and cities of the North of England are going the other way and starting to power up, and I don’t want to see that as Prime Minister. 

    I want everywhere to do well. And I think everywhere can do well. 

    I do want good growth in every postcode here and the rest of the UK.

    And I want to work with the First Minister to deliver it. 

    Because, the fact is we won’t agree on everything and we’re not going to and we shouldn’t try because there are some things we will disagree on. 

    But that does not mean just because you can’t agree on everything it doesn’t mean you can’t agree on anything. 

    We can agree on some things, and I know that because I’ve worked with John over a long period of time as well. 

    In my mind, the real question is not whether we should try and work together… 

    The real question is why on earth we wouldn’t we?

    It would only be party politics that would stop that, and that’s not a good enough reason not to try and work together. 

    So today I want to make a serious and genuine offer to the Scottish Government.

    I want to move on from the old politics of conflict…

    To bring people together….

    Across governments and in Scotland… 

    Alongside Number 10 North….

    Or Number 10 South to you…

    And in the immediate months ahead, I want us to design a new model, together, of regional economic empowerment across all of Scotland. 

    One that puts control where it should be, in the hands of local people.

    And if it’s going to really mean something, it has to be thorough.

    At the UK-level, we are looking at how we can devolve innovation, enterprise and employability funding so that that can be used to be matched to the strengths of Scotland’s people and places to create new industries and jobs.

    And let me just be really specific about this.

    It goes back to what I said about that book, Poverty Safari. 

    Because I read that and it had a big impact on me. 

    You know, it makes people feel really remote, doesn’t it, from the powers that be and those making decisions? 

    So I’m going to be specific and make an offer today. 

    An offer of DWP devolution. 

    I want to offer Scotland a model of localised employment support, similar to the one in England but obviously shaped by Holyrood and one that’s right for Scotland, not repeating that. 

    Because that’s a classic example of where the UK government should work with the Scottish government. 

    If you want the best employment support, not a tick-box system, then it has to go deep. It has to go right down. In other words, it has to be based on the Easterhouse principle. Has to be. 

    Names not numbers. If it’s not based on that, it won’t work. It will just be repeating the same system in a different way. 

    But I want to give Scotland the power to take the Easterhouse model nationwide here 

    Not a project on one estate, but the way we support everybody, everywhere. 

    And we should absolutely explore how to give Scotland’s regions the ability to develop the skills, the transport systems and investment, the infrastructure, the housing, everything they need to make sure the areas here are set up to deliver their full potential.

    So in a couple of weeks, the National Economic Council will meet with the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales, and the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, and we will do that for the first time since I became Prime Minister to put that offer on the table and to see if we can work out a plan together.

    I think that feels different. I hope you sense that too as you hear me lay it out. 

    And my message to John is simple: 

    I want to push economic power out into the regions of Scotland. 

    Do you? Do you? 

    Because, if you do, let’s agree on it. Let’s agree a new process, working with Douglas and working with John’s team. Let’s agree on a new proposal that’s right for Scotland, and we work together on it. 

    Let’s have both of Scotland’s governments coming together with a joint ambition to push power out from the centre – from Westminster and Holyrood –  and put it into the hands of local people. 

    And together, let’s reindustrialise Scotland.

    Because I absolutely know that it can be done. 

    And I’ll finish on this point, you’ll be glad to hear. I’ve had a lot to say, and I wanted to say it directly so you understood fully where I am coming from. 

    Here’s the thing, how much time have we wasted – and I’m thinking about my visits as a politician to Scotland – how much time have we wasted just debating what differentiates us, rather than saying, right, what can we agree on and let’s talk about that, rather than talking about the other stuff. 

    And I think the time has come for that. 

    The country is not in a position to carry on putting politics before places and politics before people. 

    It’s not in a position. We can all see and feel that. 

    We need to build our prosperity everywhere. 

    We need to get the growth going everywhere. 

    And that’s the thing. If we get this right in this moment, we will all spend more time in the years ahead talking about the exciting things that are happening in all of the different places in Scotland, and less about politics and political dramas.

    And after all, isn’t that the best thing of all that politicians could do for the people, to stop you having to worry about politics and all of us talking about how we build a better future together?

    So thank you for listening, everybody. Thank you for letting me speak to you today. I am really taken by the fact that so many people are here, so many people are listening. 

    Is there a feeling that we make this a moment of change? Is that what people want? 

    And do you think you speak for people around Scotland? Does everyone want a moment of change? The two governments working together?

    Well, let’s do it then.

  • Andy Burnham – 2026 Speech at the Innovation Nation Summit

    Andy Burnham – 2026 Speech at the Innovation Nation Summit

    The speech made by Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, in Manchester on 9 October 2026.

    It’s good to be back on home turf and I’m sorry for the shock that Manchester-based members of the audience are feeling at seeing me in person in a tie.

    So, I’m going to start by saying something that I used to say every week between the years of 2007 and 2010, when I was in his cabinet. Gordon is right. In every cabinet meeting. Very loyal. A very proud member, I might say. But life has taught me that he so often is.

    And I think many people will know that, David Sainsbury and others, we all know that. I’m pleased actually that I’ve got a member of my cabinet here today, the Business Secretary, who is part of that Greater Manchester team that is increasingly making its presence felt on the national stage and the AI Minister Kanishka Narayan. We’re really pleased to be here with you all.

    Gordon is right. Britain can be the world’s leading innovation nation. We are an innovation nation. But I today set the national goal to be the world’s leading innovation nation.

    The good news is I think we’re already close. We’ve got multiple strengths and assets that Gordon’s mentioned, but this is a moment to challenge ourselves to go further. It’s what the country needs. I said this last week in Liverpool. We need to draw a line on a decade of too much drift, face forward, get a real sense of direction, purpose, hope in our hearts, knowing where we’re going. That’s what the country needs. It’s what I’m trying to bring, and I hope it’s beginning to be felt in all of the regions and nations of the UK. I think we can go further and I want to say a few things today about how.

    The first thing though is just to question what is it to be an innovation nation and particularly to become the world’s leading. I would say this, it would mean having a globally significant cluster in every region and nation, every single one. And within those clusters, a globally significant company in every region and nation on the scale that Gordon was just describing. And from that, having opportunity, investment, growth and good jobs, fairly distributed across all parts of the UK as part of a new intentional national drive to re-industrialise the UK in the 21st century as an innovation-led, research-driven economy.

    Re-industrialisation, that is a serious part of this mission and re-industrialisation that is felt by all people in all places. We can do it and we can be the nation in the next 10 years that as Gordon says, does find the cure for cancer or does make the breakthrough on dementia or indeed on nuclear fusion.

    To anyone who says we can’t be that I say we did it before, so why not?

    As Gordon said, this is the city where Ernest Rutherford in 1917, over a 100 years ago, first split the atom. So why can’t we be the place that makes nuclear fusion a commercial possibility. After all, the Dalton Nuclear Institute is literally a stone’s throw from where we are now, and it is world leading.

    Innovation is a tradition in Britain. It is part of us. Ada Lovelace imagined what a computer could be in the 19th century, and this was before one even existed. And then Alan Turing laid down the blueprint for the world’s first programmable computer. And then he moved here to Manchester when that very machine was built here in 1948.

    Tim Berners-Lee, as Gordon said, then put the world on the web. And more, if you think about life sciences, the millions of lives saved by Alexander Fleming and Edward Jenner, the electric motor, the jet engines and the telephone, all of these things, British inventions, Britain, a nation of inventors then and now.

    The important thing is just to be clear about the assets that we have right now because they are to be found in every single region and every single nation of the UK.

    An expanding creative sector in the Liverpool city region. It is unbelievable how many things you will watch tonight on Netflix or whatever that are filmed in the city of Liverpool. It really is an amazing UK strength.

    Then if you look to South Yorkshire, the outstanding advanced manufacturing research centre that is doing so much to lift productivity in South Yorkshire.

    One of the continent’s largest fintech sectors in Edinburgh, Europe’s gaming capital in Dundee, a global hub for photonics in Glasgow, clean energy in Newcastle, space research in Leicester, the future home of the UK’s biggest electric vehicle battery plant in Somerset, a global automotive engineering research and testing centre in Warwickshire, the frontier of quantum research in Oxford, 100 billion chip design company headquartered in Cambridge, a leading cyber cluster in Belfast, thousands of jobs in compound semiconductors in South Wales. You can tell I’ve become Prime Minister because I’ve not mentioned Greater Manchester once in this list, but I will now, Greater Manchester. The biggest UK AI cluster by headcount outside of London and the South East.

    And then look at what is happening in London. There are so many strengths. The creative industries, obviously, but research, fintech, AI, our capital city is at the top of its game and can go further. So it’s proof isn’t it? We’ve got world-class strength in every region and as Gordon said every region needs now to punch its full weight and make its presence felt on the world stage as a home of innovation.

    All of those clusters are underpinned by world-class universities, many represented in this room today and we thank you for what you are doing to drive the innovation economy in the UK. It isn’t said enough, I will say it today, without you we just couldn’t have done it.

    I know as the Mayor of Greater Manchester, I’m obviously looking to Vice Chancellor of Manchester University when I say this but I know there are others in the room. We could not have done what we did here in the last 10 or more years without having the universities right with us, and I mean right with us, developing the thinking, the ambition for what we could be, and I know that applies elsewhere as well.

    The university assets we have in this country are perhaps our strongest base when it comes to being a world leader in innovation. As Gordon said, 16 in the top 100, all of them conducting world leading research and spinning out a stream of startups.

    We mentioned those London-based scientific institutions, but very shortly, the UK Biobank, a true global resource, will soon complete its move to the Manchester Science Park here. Life sciences in this part of the world about to take a major step forward, bringing cutting edge robotics and leading research into cancer dementia and heart disease to the fore.

    Behind all of it, the government is investing over 80 billion in research and innovation in this spending review.

    So, we’ve got the assets, we’ve got the talent, we’ve got the ideas and the ambition, but here’s the crux of it. Here is where we’re falling short. We are not making the most of them yet. And this is our collective challenge, everybody. This is what we must fix, and this is what today is about.

    Being an innovation nation is thinking more about what we are all doing in our different places. It’s when you combine it all together that we’ve become more than the sum of our parts in innovation and this is what the next decade has to be about.

    We can all see the world in the way that it’s changing and some of the challenges that it’s presenting to us. I’ve certainly felt that in my first two months as Prime Minister. They are huge challenges.

    In Germany yesterday talking to Chancellor Mertz, we have to face them with our partners as well and our partners in Europe. We won’t rise to these challenges if we don’t think like that, networking as people ever are. It is the way we make Britain and the people of this great country safer, healthier and more resilient in the 21st century that is going to test us in so many ways.

    We can’t do it any other way, and we need to think like that and set out a clear plan and a shared purpose and path for where we go next together and I hope that comes from today.

    For me it does always begin with place as Gordon said. If we want to unlock the potential of people in all places, we do need to give more power for them to do more for themselves. And I have set up Number 10 North for precisely that purpose, to take power out of Whitehall and rewire an over-centralised country and create the optimum conditions for innovation on the ground in all parts of the UK.

    And it’s great today to have the Cabinet Secretary, Antonia Romeo with us, and also Caroline Simpson, former Chief Executive of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority here today, Caroline leading the team at Number 10 North, both of them recognising that more power in the hands of people in our places is what will make the difference. That is when you see the fusion of public, private, academic sectors around place-based strengths.

    That is how it happens. I saw it happen here, I know it can happen elsewhere, but when you have a Cabinet Secretary committed to civil service report, leading that change, evolving power, working with Number 10 North. This is when it gets exciting, everybody. And this is what I want, what has happened here and the powers that we have here available to all parts of the UK. And that is what we are going to deliver.

    Because the key thing is when you have that, you have the ability to change the game and set new ambitions, you have the chance to improve the liveability of places. And that’s what we have tried to do here.

    And I know Steve, my colleague in Liverpool, who’s doing exactly the same, as are the other mayors. You can then attract talent to live in these great cities that perhaps wouldn’t have come here before. That is a really important part. of it. And that is what has been happening here and elsewhere in the last decade.

    So, when you are able to take more control over your destiny, and this place first in England to do it, what then happens is the crucial thing. You can set a new ambition. And that’s what we did, working with our colleagues in the private sector, Chris has been a huge driving force, as you all know here, and others who helped come together with us, our business leaders, in the city region with our vice-chancellors, then with the politicians, set a joint ambition and that’s what we did.

    And the thing we’ve got to be honest about is when we had a country that was largely run from Whitehall, it didn’t have ambitions for its big city regions like this. It wouldn’t be able to articulate them if they’d been asked to say what was the ambition for the leaders, what was the ambition for Birmingham, it just didn’t have one. But when you give people power, they then will say that ambition and they will back their places and then those places start to move.

    It’s like what Gordon said about putting a man on the moon. If you create a situation where people have the power to set a mission, it’s unbelievable and then people start to feel part of it and start to come towards it. And that is the joy of my life to see that happen here when I was the Mayor of Redmond and it’s still happening now under Bev Craig.

    And that’s what I want everybody to be able to do, all parts of the country, to set new ambitions for themselves. And you can see the results when it happens.

    For the first time, having set our ambition, we then worked with Theresa May’s government, actually, and I’m really pleased to see Greg Clarke in the audience today, because Greg led here a very important process which was the local industrial strategy process and that still underpins modern Greater Manchester and actually allowed us to develop our thinking around five clusters because that is where we got to.

    We obviously had the original creative media cluster at Media City, Life Sciences on the Oxford Road and the UK Biobank that is as I said going to go up several levels.

    Digital, cyber and AI across the city centre, our third cluster. And we have the emerging advanced materials and manufacturing cluster at Atom Valley, in the North East of Greater Manchester and Clean Energy at Carrington, five clusters and that came from that work and we thank you Greg for that.

    All built from the bottom up and this is the important point that everyone in Whitehall needs to understand and I think they’re getting the message now. It comes from the bottom up, that’s how growth is, it has to come that way. And it’s when you combine the different things together that then you weave it into something that becomes powerful and compelling.

    Business, academia, local government working in lockstep with high ambition. That’s what we want everywhere. And I want personally to see everywhere taking a step forward in that direction very shortly.

    I want all areas to have a good growth fund, on the model that has been established here. A single investment pot drawn from public sources which can then attract private capital and decisions can be made quickly and made jointly and we will say more at the budget about how that will be achieved.

    As part of that commitment I want to announce three specific measures today.

    First, we will devolve local innovation partnerships funds to established mayors from 2028. Now this is significant. I’m going to explain this because this is the first step towards devolving dedicated innovation funding to local leaders. So, a very significant announcement.

    Second, we will build on our existing industrial strategy at a national level by identifying the clusters around the UK with the potential to become truly world leading and with UKRI, commit one billion pounds over the next four years to back these clusters and these places.

    So that is working with UK Research and Innovation to take a more place-based approach to innovation is something the mayors have long called for and it’s about to happen.

    And thirdly, picking up on what Gordon was saying, I want to see more collaboration between clusters in a way Britain has never managed before.

    Lou Caldwell chaired the business board here in Greater Manchester and she pioneered the partnership between Greater Manchester and Cambridge which has really already started to open new thinking and we’re really proud that that has really taken root.

    You know Cambridge, home of incredible health research. When you connect that health research to a city region nearer 3 million people with a digital care record, you immediately see how the potential for clinical trials is totally transformed.

    And on the back of that we’ve seen Liverpool and Oxford sign a new partnership. Imperial and Warwick, doing the same. We want to see more of it, a more collaborative UK. If you think of that Edinburgh FinTech sector or gaming in Dundee, partnering them with counterparts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. That’s the way I think the UK will start to punch above its weight and that’s what we’ve got to do, partnering complementary clusters around the UK.

    So that’s the third element of this. If we do these things in this way, Number 10 North will lay the foundations for the innovation nation.

    But given the fierceness of competition globally, the Chancellor and I know we need to do more to back British investors, British inventors, entrepreneurs, and businesses.

    Our people will always be our most important asset. I believe everyone should have the opportunity to go as far as their talents will take them.

    It does need to start in schools, and we will reshape the education system so that it is innovation ready, 21st century ready and that does mean basing it on parity between academic and technical so that there is a path for everybody into the innovation economy.

    It can’t be about supercharging a part of the economy and everybody else feeling shut out. We need to give paths to everybody into the emerging innovation economy.

    And from there we need to provide quality pathways towards work experience working with our employers, work placements, apprenticeships, solving Britain’s skills deficit in a re-industrialised economy.

    What we also recognise is of the 100 fastest growing companies in the UK last year, more than half were founded by people who came to Britain.

    And let me just say for a moment, we thank them for coming here. We welcome them here. We need the brightest and the best from across the world, researchers, academics, entrepreneurs to keep choosing here. And it’s why we will have an international outlook in everything that we do, building closer ties with Europe and making sure that we have that outlook in everything that we do, not too much of the division that we’ve seen in the last decade.

    This is time to network here and around the world and that is what we will do.

    I also know we need our innovators to be able to move freely between companies and start their own without constraint.

    I believe some businesses have gone too far in their use of restrictive practices such as non-compete clauses.

    A few I know shared by many in this room and across the sector. Non-compete clauses stop workers from joining a rival organisation or indeed setting up one of their own after they have left their role and I think that’s a drag on innovation and prevents the best really being energised and bringing that dynamism to the economy.

    So, we are looking at changing this. They are often held back and unpaid during the time they have to sit out on the sidelines, and it does, as I say, stunt innovation and traps workers.

    So, I can confirm today we will legislate to make sure that non-compete clauses will no longer be a barrier to hiring for our most promising startups and scaling firms.

    Call it, if you like, the Bosman ruling for the innovation sector, but I think it’s much needed and long overdue.

    And we will ensure, by the way, that workers in the foundational economy, the everyday economy, are not prevented from moving jobs too.

    We will also bring forward options to address the wider use of restrictive practices. Everyone needs talent to succeed. Everyone needs investment to grow. We are in Britain very good at financing companies early on. The problem is that when our companies are ready to scale, the money too often comes from abroad or not at all. And before long, that company will head to where that investment came.

    We have, I believe, been too relaxed as a country about this arrangement. How many innovations, how many inventions can you think of that began here and then were scaled up somewhere else around the world?

    This is part of our national story, which we should not be proud, and we should commit to change today.

    Over the last two years the government has sought to increase domestic investment in UK assets through the creation of a national wealth fund and reforms made to the local government pension scheme, but we will go further and ensure more UK pension capital is invested specifically in British-based, high-growth companies.

    With talent and capital, you also need somewhere to sell. We are the fifth largest economy in the world, yet alone our market is simply not big enough for one of our startups to grow into a global giant. And this is why our trade deals with the US, India, and others matter, why closer relations with the European Union matter.

    You all heard me talk before about the power of public procurement to re-industrialise Britain, and this applies just as much to our shipyards and steelworks as it does to our start-ups, and we will make British public procurement work harder.

    We will work with our trade unions too, represented in this audience today with Jay McKenna from the TUC.

    We will make sure that we get good jobs by using social value procurement too.

    We’ve got a great example of that on the River Mersey with Camel Laird or the former Camel Laird site and what has been happening there.

    I want to see so much more of that across the UK. British public procurement driving re-industrialisation but also giving good secure jobs to people in all places. And that will be a very big theme.

    So, this is how we use our resources better to support British business and retain sovereign manufacturing capability and technology. A government on your side not in the way. That’s what we want to be.

    I know it’s not always felt like that. Our Regulatory Innovation Office is changing it. New sandboxing powers will allow us to suspend rules temporarily, giving innovators the space to test out ideas more freely.

    It means you can develop new technology more quickly and bring new medicines for instance to patients faster.

    We cannot speak about innovation today without mentioning AI.

    Of course, it is a foundational technology that would underpin all of the sectoral strengths of the United Kingdom, and we need to have a mentality of building out the AI sector everywhere to support a research driven innovation led economy everywhere.

    As you know Britain takes the presidency of the G20 next year and I have promised to demonstrate our renewed confidence as a country by putting AI top of the G20 agenda.

    We do need to take an AI for good approach first and foremost because it can unlock everything that we’re talking about today, but at the same time be clear-sighted about the risks it may pose.

    And just as Gordon did in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008, convening the world around a set of principles and standards to safeguard the global economy, so Britain will do it again, using the high level of trust that we have from many countries to develop a global set, a global code of standards and principles to support an AI for good approach, but at the same time making sure that we guard against any risks it may pose.

    This could be a major moment as the G20 comes to Manchester for the Leaders’ Summit next year, a huge opportunity for investment and I hope you will work with me to unlock it right around the country.

    Even if we get all of this right, it is still a fact that business and those who build companies want to see a reward. And those who back them expect to see a return.

    If the UK wants to build global companies, we need to be globally competitive. To do that, we cannot have Britain’s startups simply sell up.

    So, one of our biggest challenges is breaking through our own ceiling.

    Too often our best ideas are developed and scaled overseas, as I said, with it the jobs, technology and investment that goes with them.

    So, I know there is more to do to fix that, specifically on tax, to encourage people to stay and scale.

    And if we do that, we know the UK can become home to trillion-pound companies in the future, as Gordon was saying, who employ thousands of people, pay taxes and invest in local communities.

    Obviously, we will be able to develop that thinking as we go forward from here.

    So, I want to finish by where Gordon ended his remarks in that concept of an idea galvanizing everybody and then bringing progress forward.

    When we were speaking about this event, we talked about how an innovation nation comes to life around some of those big missions that we might set ourselves. But what is it that we’re ultimately reaching for here?

    I mentioned jobs and apprenticeships and investment opportunities and obviously people having higher living standards, growth productivity, all of those things are important.

    But the main thing, and let’s not today forget this, it’s about human progress at the end of the day. That’s what innovation can most bring, in the 21st century, making sure that everywhere we can see and feel human progress. And I think there’s areas where we need to go further. And I want to learn from something I did when I was here as Mayor.

    I was advised when I came in 10 years ago that we could within a decade end all youth transmissions of HIV in the Greater Manchester, I should say in a generation.

    It was part of the Fast Track Cities initiative, a call to arms to improve screening, education, testing, and get life-saving antivirals to the most vulnerable in our city and region. I’ll be honest, I felt sceptical about it all the time. I was worried about making a commitment that we could end new transmissions of HIV in greater amounts within a generation.

    I look back at it, and I castigate myself for the caution because the progress has been incredible.

    When you do put out a challenge and you ask people to pull together. It’s amazing actually what happens and the progress that we’ve achieved on it means we’ve achieved our fast-track HIV goals as a sitting region.

    And I learned from that and then start to think well how do then we apply that thinking more nationally.

    So, what we need to do is draw from our past and start to set new goals for the future.

    I think we are a global leader in life sciences, and we should be proud of that status. We all remember what happened during the pandemic. Britain was at the forefront of the development of the vaccine.

    We have successfully added years to life in so many ways, but I look at a challenge that is particularly personal to me right now.

    We have nearly a million people living with dementia in Britain and I cannot stand before you today and say that we know enough about it because honestly, we don’t.

    When people get a diagnosis, what are they told? But even before a diagnosis, do we all know enough individually about what we might do now to change our lifestyle to reduce the risk of dementia in later life. I don’t think we do, do we?

    This is the issue, I would say, or one of the issues in the 21stcentury, but we’re still in a position where we are not facing it fully.

    Cancer has made a huge drive in terms of what we know and what we can do, and we need to see the same now around dementia.

    Cancer was the 20th century focus and look what’s been achieved and we need to keep that going. But we need to convene people in the same way because I do know three things from personal experience.

    First, I know of its cruelty as a disease and what it does not just to the person but the people around that person. It’s devastating, absolutely devastating and I know many of you know that too.

    I also know, secondly, that we don’t know enough about it. As I said before, it’s quite shocking actually when you are in that experience and you start to try and find out more. I know amazing work being done by the Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK, but still, we don’t know enough about it, nowhere near enough.

    But thirdly, and more positively, there is extraordinary work underway to find out more and to stop it.

    The Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme was set up by a previous Conservative government. Part of that programme includes the Barbara Alliance, a brilliant organisation which carries out some remarkable work in the search for new dementia treatments by increasing the number of participants in clinical trials.

    Today I’m very pleased to announce 33 million pounds of government investment to support those life changing efforts. And with thanks to additional industry funding, it means a total of 48 million will now go to speed up the development of dementia treatments.

    I can also confirm today that the Health Data Research Service, a 600 million investment by this government and the Wellcome Trust, will select dementia as one of their first priorities.

    And this is a move that I hope will make the UK the leading nation in dementia research. I want Britain to be the country that makes the breakthrough and delivers the cure for dementia the world has been waiting for.

    And I say it knowing we can do it. Absolutely confident that we can. When this country pulls together, there is nothing that we can do. We are unbeatable.

    I mentioned the vaccine, the Oxford vaccine, but also there are so many other things that we can point to for Britain to take pride in and then from that start believing in ourselves again.

    We have everything we need to succeed. We’ve got the finest minds working at the most prestigious universities, the most innovative companies and clusters producing some of the most advanced technologies.

    We are doing so much right, but we can do so much more. We have good opportunities now in all of our nations and regions to deliver something that I’ve set as a mission as Prime Minister, good growth in every postcode.

    Let’s really focus on that and bring innovation to all parts of the UK as well. We can grow our companies into global giants. We can extend the chain of human achievement. We can be the world’s innovation nation.

    Thank you very much.

  • Andy Burnham – 2026 Comments on Dementia

    Andy Burnham – 2026 Comments on Dementia

    The comments made by Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, on 8 October 2026.

    Dementia is a devastatingly cruel disease, not only for those who live with it, but for the families who care for them. For too long, we have accepted dementia as something to be managed later in life, rather than a disease we can defeat. I don’t accept that. In fact, I have real hope that we can come together and do exactly that.

    I want Britain to be the country that makes the breakthrough and delivers the cure for dementia the world has been waiting for. That is why I am making dementia research a national priority – by backing the NHS, universities, researchers and industry to drive the breakthroughs we desperately need.

    This investment goes hand in hand with our plans for a National Care Service, helping ensure that people living with dementia get the care and support they need, and giving families peace of mind that their loved ones will be cared for.

  • Andy Burnham – 2026 Speech to Labour Party Conference

    Andy Burnham – 2026 Speech to Labour Party Conference

    The speech made by Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, in Liverpool on 29 September 2026.

    Thank you so much, Conference. Thank you.

    And Nadia, I love you Nadia. I am so proud of you, so proud of you up on the stage. Thank you.

    All Together Now. That’s my rallying call to the country today. When we pull as one, there is nothing we can’t do.

    Today we draw a line on a decade of division. We stop doomscrolling on posts running Britain down. And we put the country on a new path.

    Britain with belief again. People with hope again. 

    It’s very hard to put into words the emotion I feel standing here before you all.

    For me, life truly has come full circle because this is where my story began. My grandad drove a lorry along these docks for Tate & Lyle. 

    My gran Kitty inherited the drive of her Irish ancestors. She walked three miles out of the bombed-out city after the war to put a deposit down on a house, without Jimmy’s knowledge actually. I wouldn’t do that to you John, wherever you are Chancellor!

    She put a deposit down on a house. The house where I was born. It changed the fortunes of my family.

    It was where my mum and dad started off, built a partnership and went on to create our own family home and filled it with life, love and laughter.

    Eileen and Roy gave me a care for people. Forged by her faith, his politics and the values of this great city we are in again for our conference.

    They guided me to the point where I stand before you today.

    Ours is the same story of so many families, British families of my generation. A story of working-class aspiration. A desire to get on and give back, never pulling up the ladder. And a post-war Britain that backed them to do it. 

    It’s still there, as I saw in Stourbridge this summer. I watched a whole community getting stuck in to support those whose homes had been burnt down. Proof the British people haven’t changed. Still as great as they ever were. 

    But something is different these days. That sense of the powers-that-be pulling against the people not with them. If there’s one thing I want to put right, it’s that.

    Imagine living in a Britain where people feel the country has their got back again. A Britain for everyone, no matter who we are or where we’re born. We would be unstoppable. And we will be.

    Conference, I am 10 weeks into this job. And not all of my recent predecessors have been able to say that.

    I’ve been thinking very carefully about what to say to you today. Of course I am here to speak to you, our Labour family. The other family that love so much. 

    For the historic victory he achieved for us, I am here to say thank you Keir. And to thank you to the whole of this conference and all of you for the backing that you have given me.

    The politician in me wants to give the usual tub-thumping conference speech today. But the patriot in me tells me something very different is needed.

    This country isn’t where any of us would want it to be. Politics-as-usual has taken it backwards. More of the same isn’t good enough. That’s why I feel I have to break the mould today.

    I am going to give you a real speech. 

    I left Westminster a decade ago because of my frustration at its failure to face up to what happened at Hillsborough. Its refusal to treat all parts of the country equally and fairly. Its capitulation in the face of the social care crisis.

    So I became an outsider from the Westminster club. When I asked the people Makerfield to support my return, it was not because I missed Westminster so much. It was to come back to change it. To make politics work for you.

    Everyone can see the position Britain is in. Everyone knows things are not working as they should. Everyone is talking about how life is too expensive. Everyone wants less drift and more direction.

    Today I answer that call.

    Hope comes from honesty and we will have hope again. But first, honesty. It comes from saying the things politicians usually avoid.

    I will say it straight. Britain has been on the wrong path for a long time. Deindustrialisation. Deregulation. Privatisation. Austerity. Brexit.

    And what has it given us? A country run for vested interests. Not in the public interest. With power held in too few hands. And too many places left to drift. 

    I am ready to do things my predecessors wouldn’t. I will make a break with the direction of the past 40 years and put Britain on a new path.

    Build a new economy and a new politics. That is the case I make to you today. 

    Conference, change will be difficult. It always is. But I know we can do it. Because we have done it before.

    In 1945, we had the vision to win the peace. We had the bravery to make change. We built good homes, secure jobs, health and education for everyone. We gave Britain hope again.

    We made working-class aspiration feel real for families like mine. We built the common good. Or at least we did until the 1980s.

    Suddenly, the common wealth we had created, this party, the wealth we had created for the many was seen as an opportunity for the few.

    Homes. Water. Energy. Transport. Care. Broken up and sold off.

    The British Right talk about ‘taking back control’. Never let them forget, they are the ones that gave it away in the first place.

    Economic control diminished by selling off essentials. Political control corroded by the hollowing out of councils. Immigration control weakened by Brexit.

    Later this year, we will publish our plan for Britain and set out how, over 10 years, we will make this country work for you again.

    More control of the basics so that we can make it more functional. More power in the hands of people and places to set their own ambitions. And from there, good growth in every postcode, hope in every heart.

    Our journey starts where I started, in the Old Roan, not far from here. With housing. A home. 

    That home on Keeble Drive unlocked the aspiration in my mum and dad for a better life for us all and has taken us to places we could never have imagined.

    With a good home, everything is possible. Without one, it feels like nothing is.

    Kids can’t have a good start in life. Families can’t have good health, physical and mental health. Over a million people are in that position on housing waiting lists – almost exactly the same number as the homes we lost through Right-to-Buy in the 1980s.

    I will not rest until we live in a Britain where everyone has a roof over their head every night and no one is forced to sleep rough on our streets.

    On my first day in this job, on the steps of Downing Street, I set an immediate mission to end the need for rough sleeping. Everyone In. Our new permanent national policy.

    Putting the right principles and standards back at the heart of this country. The care for people I got from my mum and dad at the heart of the running of the British state. 

    From there, the biggest council house building programme since the post-war era, led by Angela Rayner.

    And I am specific about council homes because we need to restore stronger democratic control over our housing stock.

    We will help councils build again and make it affordable by building on unused public land. We will reform Right-to-Buy. Not taking the right away from anyone in an existing home. But removing it from the new homes we build so they are there for generations to come.

    Rebuilding our common wealth. Restoring the public housing stock to what it once was, not just by building new but acting on the private rented stock too. 

    Go to almost any town across Britain and you will see plenty of empty homes. We will give councils the power to take control of them and bring them back into the public housing stock. 

    You will see rented homes in a poor state of repair too on so many British streets. Homes which harm the health of the people inside and drag down the streets around them.

    The worst of it? Often owned by absent landlords who are paid through the benefits system but refuse to reinvest anything in the upkeep of the property.

    It is time to call an end to this. Landlords who rent out the worst quality homes will be given warnings to improve them. If they refuse, we will make it much easier for councils to acquire those homes and we will legislate if necessary.

    We don’t let people sell food which damages health. So why allow it with homes? From now on, we won’t.

    This is what I mean about taking back control with our communities.

    But I also want to get back to a Britain where young people starting out are able to buy a home like my mum and dad did. Like I did.

    They have had it tougher than us. Working hard, paying bills, trying to save but looking at a student loan which never gets any smaller.

    Today I say to them we are bringing back the hope you can have a home of your own. 

    Your First Home will reduce the size of the deposit you need. It will open up home ownership to those not backed by the bank of mum and dad.

    And we promise we will not forget our promises to leaseholders. We will introduce a Bill before Christmas for long overdue Leasehold Reform.

    To the millions of leaseholders across the country, you have my word. The days of you being squeezed for every penny are coming to an end.

    Conference, this is the break we are making with the flawed thinking of the last 40 years. 

    Not seeing housing only as a market with winners and losers, but as an essential everyone needs for a good life.

    And the next stage of our journey is to apply that same philosophy to the most basic thing of all. 

    Water is a symbol of what has gone wrong with Britain. A service where the shareholders never lose and the public never win. From which some have syphoned out easy money while the public picked up the bill for the sewage in our seas.

    It stinks. I will not allow it to continue like this.

    Today I can confirm Angela Eagle will present a strengthened Water Bill to Parliament. The centrepiece of that Bill will be this – the repeal of Margaret Thatcher’s ideological ban on public ownership of water companies.

    It will start a 10-year journey to a very different water system. 

    It will strengthen public control. Mayors will have new powers to hold water companies to account, with tougher consequences for those which repeatedly fail. It will close the loopholes used to pay excessive bonuses.

    Where private companies serve the public interest, we will support them. But the consequences will be clear for those who do not, including taking back control or public ownership.

    Conference, when people hear the phrase public control, I am sure some think it’s anti-business. It’s the opposite.

    Businesses need the basics to be functional and affordable too, as does the wider economy. As someone said to me recently, there’s a reason why you can’t build all over the Water Works and the Electric Company on the Monopoly board. 

    One of the biggest barriers to growth in the UK is the cost of energy. British businesses and billpayers pay some of the highest energy costs in Europe. 

    Within 10 years, I want those costs to be in line with our neighbours. 

    This means reforming a broken energy market so it better serves the public interest. 

    We are already taking more control of our electricity prices with a massive expansion of home-grown renewables and nuclear. I have asked Miatta to speed up the breaking of the link between what we pay for power at home and the international gas market, to get bills down. 

    And we will be pragmatic in relation to the North Sea as we build a bridge to a clean energy future and face the climate crisis. 

    But it’s not just the price. The system needs to work better too. You would not believe how many businesses complain to me they can’t get going because they can’t get connected to the grid.  

    It pushes costs up. It drags growth down. And it holds Britain back. We won’t get the growth and inward investment we need if we don’t fix it.

    So, for the first time, we will have a national energy plan and we will bring back local democratic control through a stronger role for mayors and local leaders. 

    But we must go further. Today I can announce our plan for Great British Grid. A new branch of Great British Energy. A publicly-owned company that will challenge the private sector operators. 

    It will increase competition, drive down costs and speed up connections so businesses can expand and grow more quickly.   

    Energy, water, housing. Back under stronger public control. We rely on them, we pay for them and once again we will have power over them.

    I realise people can’t wait forever for change though. They need breathing space now. And I am determined to provide it.

    I can say to everyone watching, you will see VAT disappear off your electricity bill this Thursday. I didn’t expect a standing ovation for that but I’ll take it. Thank you, Conference!

    From January, you will be able to travel for the whole of 2027 anywhere in England paying no more than £2 for a single bus journey. You knew I wouldn’t get through a conference speech without mentioning buses, didn’t you?

    These things are not everything but I hope you will see it as a sign, a strong one, of our intent to get your bills and fares down as you wait for the bigger changes to come.

    I would love to go quicker. But I have to be honest about what the country can afford. I will stick to our fiscal rules to get borrowing and debt down. 

    The approach I am outlining today is the responsible one. If we build a generation of council homes, we will save billions from the housing benefit budget over the decade.

    If we get energy bills down, we will better control inflation and support the economy. 

    If we change the way we support people, we will get more people into work and the welfare bill down. 

    Not through crude cuts. That should never be the Labour way. 

    But by investing in people in their success, supporting them to get where they want to be, rather than paying for failure as the country does now. 

    Our plan for public control is a plan for growth, growth of people, places and businesses.

    The truth is this. When we gave up public control, we left people exposed. Just when it was getting harder to grow up and harder to grow old.

    Support has been cut away from young and old. And that leaves the country paying for failure on a grand scale.

    Almost a million young people not working or learning. Thousands of older people stuck in hospital because of the lack of good home care. 

    We can’t afford to carry on like this.

    In 1945 we had the Beveridge Report. We need something similar now. A new social contract for the 21st century.

    You know of my long-held ambitions to reform social care. When I was a new MP in the early 2000s, I despaired at what I saw when my gran Kitty went through the system. 

    I winced at the pain it caused my mum. My gran’s engagement ring ripped from her finger and stolen in a care home. Care not worthy of the name.

    And the modest savings she had built up through her life, starting from the house where I was born? All taken to pay for it.

    I vowed then to fight for something better for my parents’ generation. And here we are 25 years later. If anything, it’s worse today than it was then.

    What an indictment of my generation of politicians, myself included. Too cowardly to fix something as basic as the care we give to each other.

    Is it any wonder people are giving up on politics?

    I watched closely the people who looked after my dad. Caring for other people’s parents on poverty pay, but doing it with huge skill, humour and humanity.

    Holding a threadbare system somehow together.

    Yet invisible to the political class of this country.

    I want to speak directly today to our care workers.

    You are not invisible to me.

    I see you.

    I thank you.

    And I am sorry that my profession has let down yours for so long.

    I promise you: I won’t leave this job without doing everything I can to change things for you.

    And I say the same to our wonderful NHS staff.

    We have let you down too.

    Left you under intolerable pressure.

    At risk of burn-out.

    Dealing with 999 calls from a failing care system.

    Corridor care your daily reality.

    If we carry on like this, Conference, broken social care will break the NHS too.

    And we can’t let that happen, we must never let that happen, this party that founded the National Health Service.

    There is only one real answer.

    A person-centred, high-quality care service that starts in the home.

    A system in the best traditions of this party, where everyone contributes and everyone is covered.

    Free at the point of use and no care charges paid out of your basic state pension.

    Care that is about people not profit. 

    Which gives peace of mind over care needs in later life.

    Which protects people’s homes and their savings.

    And gives proper recognition to the care workers we will all need to rely on at some point in our lives.

    Conference, this is the National Care Service we will build.

    We will, we will. Thank you, Conference. 

    We’re going to do it. We are going to do it.

    A landmark policy as significant as the creation of the NHS itself.

    And utterly essential to securing its future.

    NHS savings from fewer ambulance call-outs, A&E admissions and vulnerable people being stuck unnecessarily in hospital.

    We will start laying the ground now for the National Care Service and introduce it in the next Parliament. 

    Louise Casey’s review will advise us on exactly how and Yvette and I will seek to build the maximum national consensus around her recommendations.   

    It will be fully funded, and not through borrowing.

    Conference, I won’t pretend some of this won’t be difficult.

    I accept I may pay a political price.

    But someone has to go through the pain barrier and rip the plaster off.

    It’s the leadership I promised you when I asked to be your leader and I will do it.

    But I’ll be honest as well.

    We promised in our manifesto to keep the Triple Lock unchanged throughout this Parliament. 

    I will honour that promise.

    I will honour that promise, and I will do more.

    That promise will take the state pension to a record high.

    From there, in April 2030, we will adjust it.

    The state pension will continue to rise every year at least by prices or 2.5%.

    And it will hold its value relative to earnings over time so that pensioners will always share in the rising prosperity of the nation.

    But this change will generate significant savings which we will use to build up our National Care Service.

    Some may not realise it but older people with nothing more than the state pension, or only a little more, can find themselves paying care charges today from that small income.

    Under my plan, this will no longer happen.

    I can also confirm today our commitment to ensure that the low-income pensioners won’t be dragged into paying income tax in this Parliament.

    So this is the deal.

    A state pension that rises every year.

    No care charges.

    And a high-quality National Care Service to give peace of mind in later life. 

    Conference, I am going to go out and argue for that.

    A good deal for our pensioners and for older people in the 21st century.

    And I will do it in memory of my dad and out of complete respect for everyone who cared for him.

    Conference, we will need to show the same boldness for our young people too.

    Just when growing up got harder in the social media age, their support was stripped away.

    Youth services practically abolished in the 2010s.

    Children’s mental health services cut.

    Families left to battle for support for kids with special educational needs and disabilities.

    So many young people cast adrift by a school system built for some, not all, overly focused on the university route and not enough on technical education.

    Should we be really surprised that the numbers of late teens and early 20s on benefits has grown?

    Conference, it’s not their fault. It’s ours.

    Politicians fail to give people, young people, the support they need as they grow up in a tougher world and then threaten them in their 20s that they will strip away what they’re left with.

    How is that fair? How does that build a strong society?

    We have a choice, Conference.

    Either we invest in our young people.

    Or we pay for failure through the benefits system.

    Truthfully, we can’t afford to do both.

    My choice is to invest in them.

    We can’t retake control of the country’s future if we leave so many of our young people drifting towards it.

    We await the final report from Alan Milburn’s review.

    But I can say now we will change the education system and the welfare system. 

    We will rebuild a system of comprehensive education in this country with parity between academic and technical, with Lucy Powell leading the way.

    Good quality pathways for all from 14.

    And the right support for our young people when they need it.

    A 45-day work placement between 16 and 18.

    An apprenticeship at 18.

    And no long waits anymore for mental health support growing up.

    We will need a fundamental rethink of the welfare system to find the money for these opportunities upfront.

    And we will require young people to take up the help presented to them – guaranteeing in-work support and not leaving those out of work losing confidence and connection.  

    This is a different approach to welfare. 

    It is based on a philosophy of social security.

    A country which invests in people’s success, rather than abandoning them and paying for failure, will be much more resilient to the shocks we will undoubtedly face in the rest of this century.

    And more able to meet its NATO obligations on defence.

    This leadership we are showing at home will be matched on the international stage. 

    I will be steadfast in my support for Ukraine and stand up to threats wherever they come from. Whether Russia, Iran or anywhere.

    And Conference, we will be principled in our leadership in securing a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, as Ed Miliband has shown.

    This is the Labour way. A plan for Britain that will enhance our social security and our national security.

    You don’t make Britain safer by leaving a younger generation without hope stuck at home looking at screens. 

    You do it by giving young people hope again. 

    And you do it by getting our economy growing strongly again.

    I know Britain is full of brilliant businesses who want our young people to succeed and want to employ them.

    And we will help them do that and grow together.

    I have a theory of growth.

    It starts by retaking control of the essentials that make a place work or not.

    You’ve got to have that control over the fundamental things that everybody needs.

    And from there you devolve more power to places to put them in charge and decide their own destiny.

    And then in doing those things we optimise the conditions for businesses to grow.


    And make sure we support our people so they are there for our business to employ.

    Conference, I developed this approach over a decade leading the country’s fastest-growing city region.

    And I could not have been more proud to hand over to Bev Craig as the new Mayor of Greater Manchester.

    It’s like the other way round from when Alex Ferguson handed over to David Moyes, I think this is David Moyes handing over to Alex Ferguson.

    We have a theory of growth, and we built it with Steve too when we left Westminster together, and with the other mayors who are with us today.

    And you can see the change, you can feel it in this city, can’t you. 

    Amazing isn’t it, to be here, to see it every year, because we come back every year. 

    We see the change every year, and how good is that to see.

    And we want it everywhere, don’t we, every place represented in this conference hall here today. 

    And that’s what I intend to do.

    I intend to take what I did in Manchester, our plan for good growth, and drive it from the very centre of Government into every postcode in Britain.

    Number 10 North, in lockstep with John and the Treasury, overseeing the rewiring of the British state, the rebuilding of resilience in our communities and the re-industrialisation of our regions. 

    Changing government procurement so that it backs British business, as our trade unions have rightly pushed us to do.

    And that will require culture change in Whitehall.

    The Mayor of the Liverpool City Region should not have had to fight Whitehall as hard as he did to get a new ferry built on the banks of the River Mersey.

    And what a job he is doing.

    Liverpool growing faster than the UK economy.

    How often have we been able to say that in our lifetimes? What a brilliant thing to be able to say.

    Places written off by the powers-that-be in the past now proving them wrong.

    Bringing big names in AI like Kyndryl into the city. 

    I see huge potential for more of this in every part of Britain.

    I see start-ups and scale-ups pouring out of our world-class universities.

    I see businesses up and down the country playing their part and ready to do more.

    As Gordon Brown has said, we can be the world’s innovation nation, and he’s right, we can.

    A nation trusted by others to be a global leader in AI, an honest broker 

    When Britain takes the Presidency of the G20 next year, I will show our new-found confidence as a country, and I will show it to the world by putting AI centre stage and Britain will then work to develop a new global code to capture its benefits whilst being clear-eyed about its risks.

    Just as Gordon did in the financial crisis in 2008, so Britain will do it again, step forward, and bring people together around what’s right for the future.

    Securing our prosperity, but also our safety, and particularly the safety of our young people.

    We led the world first’s industrial revolution from the Midlands and the North of England.

    So why can’t we lead the next?

    We can, Conference.

    And we will.

    We are a country full of working-class aspiration.

    And we will be the Government that unlocks it.

    Conference, there is one final thing we need to change if our plan for Britain is to succeed.

    Our politics.

    Westminster prizes point-scoring over problem-solving.

    And that is why so many things go unfixed for so long.

    If we want to change Britain, we need to change ourselves.

    I will work as hard as I can to get as much cross-party support for our plan for Britain.

    If we can secure that, it will project a message of confidence and stability to markets and the world about Britain’s future direction.

    It is why I decided to make this a very different conference speech.

    We can’t succeed in the eyes of the world if we continue with the levels of political turbulence we have seen in recent times.

    It is always in my mind that I’m the seventh Prime Minister in ten years. 

    It is why I want to underpin our plan for Britain with a new politics.  

    We will all have failed in our public duties if we carry on as we are and open the door of Number 10 to a divisive government on less than 30% of the vote.

    Conference, in past years you have voted twice to support electoral reform. 

    I hear you, I agree with you and today I am announcing a new national commission on electoral reform.

    I invite all the political parties to be part of its work.

    We will contest the next election with a manifesto commitment to change the electoral system so that everyone’s vote counts and everyone’s voice is heard.

    As you can see, what I am outlining is a more serious and thought-through prospectus for the future of Britain than people have been offered in a generation.

    I appreciate some of it is difficult. 

    I accept people, including in this hall, will not agree with every part of it.

    But I believe this is what we need, small things will not get us through what are difficult times.

    We need to be bigger and to have the courage of our convictions.

    I believe we can turn Britain around, but it requires us to think bigger about what we need to do.

    I will try my best to find common ground.

    But let me be clear.

    Where I can’t agree with others, I will fight hard for what I believe to be right and what I believe to be in the best interests of this country.

    On the day my dad died, the Scottish First Minister said I would be the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

    I quote that not to seek sympathy.

    Nor to criticise John Swinney, I don’t think he knew the news at the time.

    And anyway, my dad Roy would have been the first to defend his right to say it.

    I relay it because I want you to know how it made me feel.

    Utterly determined to prove him wrong.

    Whatever its flaws, this country gave my dad a good life.

    And it has given his sons opportunities he didn’t get for himself.

    He recognised that and was grateful for it.

    And so proud of what Nick, John and I did with them.

    If only, if only he had been able to appreciate that moment of the family in Downing Street.

    The son of a man who failed his 11-plus becoming Prime Minister.

    The fact it could even happen in this country would not have been lost on him.

    He could have gone to university himself, but times were different then so it wasn’t an option.

    But he voted every time, religiously for the Labour governments which changed education so his sons could do that.

    The United Kingdom my dad represented is the one I believe in.

    A union of nations that gave trade unions and the cooperative movement to the world.

    The National Health Service.

    A country that stood up to fascism.

    A country of solidarity not separation.

    That’s the Britain my dad represented.

    Britain is not perfect. It can be better and we will make it so.

    But it still stands for something worth saving, worth fighting for.

    And we will always be stronger facing a changing world together, rather than separating.

    So I am going to use this job to build the kind of Britain my dad wanted to see – and fight with everything I’ve got to keep it together.

    Not the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

    Rather the first to rewire it to make it work for all people and places.

    Driving power out of Whitehall and into every postcode of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and closing divides between people and places.

    The first Prime Minister to make a break with politics-as-usual. 

    I believe the plan I have outlined today will not just hold us together, it will allow us to rise again.

    Britain to rise again.

    And we will be a Britain again confident of our place in the world.

    It has changed dramatically since 2016.

    And, in the spirit of this speech, we have to be honest.

    Brexit hasn’t given us control.

    We’ve lost some of the control we had over our economy, as a decade of low growth has put us in a weaker position.

    And we’ve lost some of our control over immigration.

    At its most fundamental level, this is a debate about fairness.

    So I understand the anger about what is happening in the Channel.

    Shabana has done a great job in beginning to restore our grip over the system.

    People arriving on small boats down 40% on the last year, 50% from the early 2020s.

    Net migration down more than 80% since the peak of the Boris Johnson era.

    Conference, we make these changes but we will always grateful – always, and we thank them – to those whose who have come here and are contributing to our country.

    Than you, to them.

    But control over immigration was weakened when we lost collaboration with our European partners.

    And we are still having to work hard to bring it back.

    Later this year, there will be a UK-EU summit where one of the issues on the agenda will be how we best work together on immigration.

    And beyond that we will work to secure gains for our industries most harmed by Brexit.

    Conference, these are important concrete steps.

    But they are not enough.

    I say this to you and the country.

    We will not give Britain the clear path we need into the rest of the century until we decide on a long-term relationship with what is still our largest market.

    I cannot say to you truthfully that where we are is good enough.

    Brexit has done more harm than good.

    We need to restore a higher level of growth and prosperity for Britain.  

    So, I will take the opportunity around the summit to lay out to you, to lay out to the country, what I believe the different options are for Britain’s long-term relationship with our European partners.

    And there are different options.


    And I will see if we can find consensus around one which will give us clarity about our position, and the future of the continent we live in.

    Well, Conference, I did warn you this speech would be different, didn’t I?

    But I think this moment in our country’s history requires it.

    1945.

    1964.

    1997.

    Now.

    All moments of Labour governments.

    All moments which saw Britain rediscover a sense of hope.

    When I walked up Downing Street on my first day in the job, I promised to give Britain a circuit breaker.

    To get us out of the rut we’ve been in.

    To get us believing again.

    I say to this to everyone watching at home.

    You may disagree with some or all of what I have said today.

    But I have given you what you often say is missing from politics.  

    Honesty, ideas and a clear direction for the country we all love.

    I now want to make a direct appeal to you.

    If you agree with enough of what I have said, get behind this plan. 

    And get behind each other.

    It’s time to draw a line.

    To move beyond a decade of drift and division.

    To bring a spirit of unity and positivity back to our country.

    To unlock the working-class aspiration that is still there in every postcode in this great land.

    All Together Now.

    We can do it.

    We will believe again.

    We will hope again.

    Thank you, Conference.

  • Andy Burnham – 2026 Statement on Sarah Everard Murder

    Andy Burnham – 2026 Statement on Sarah Everard Murder

    The statement made by Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, on 21 September 2026.

    The brutal abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard at the hands of a serving police officer changed everything. As the country recoiled in collective horror, we were forced to confront the reality women and girls face every day.

    For me, that happened when watching the details of Sarah’s death unfold on the news with my daughters. As they watched, they began to open up about some of the things they and their friends have to deal with.

    Sarah’s loss was at the most violent end of a scale of misogyny that women experience all around them. It begins with words designed to disrespect them, or catcalling to intimidate women on their own streets. It can grow into harassment, stalking and image-based abuse that seeks to humiliate and dehumanise. At its most extreme, it can lead to violence, abuse and murder. The outcomes may be different, but they have the same poisonous roots.

    This behaviour corrodes our whole society. Yet it is women who are expected to change their behaviour to accommodate it. Wearing trainers so they are ready to run. Changing their route home. Holding their keys between their fingers.

    Checking over their shoulder. And shamefully, it is women who must find the strength to speak out, an experience which too often becomes as traumatic as the original abuse. That has to change. And it has to change now.

    We must end the shame placed on victims and put the responsibility where it belongs: on the men who abuse them. Instead of asking women and girls: what are you doing to avoid this? We should be asking ourselves: what are we doing to change this?

    I am committed to tackling violence against women and girls and getting justice for victims. When I took office, I was presented with some good plans to roll out specialist rape and sexual abuse police offence teams. But these were not due to be introduced until 2029. I have now brought these reforms forward to next year.

    Prosecution rates for rape remain shamefully low. Victims wait years for justice. Cases drag on. And too many victims eventually withdraw, exhausted by a system that was supposed to deliver justice for them. It is not good enough.

    We will ensure court buildings have separate entrances and private rooms to support vulnerable victims. And we will create a new victim support role in courts that will mean women are not alone in this difficult period of their lives. In short, we will rebalance the scales of justice and put women and girls first.

    These changes are long overdue and will help, but directing our efforts on prosecution alone is not enough. We must do more to stop these crimes happening in the first place. To fix this problem, we require a culture shift in our society and a focus on how we prevent male violence against women and girls.

    This starts with education. Our new curriculum will teach young people about healthy relationships and guide them away from harmful misogynistic influences. We have made strangulation pornography illegal, so young men do not grow up thinking sexual violence is normal and young women do not feel pressured into dangerous acts. We will teach students to spot the signs of abuse as they head off to university. And the Minister for Women and Equalities will lead a new national taskforce to tackle and prevent misogyny.

    I know that too often people feel like politics does not work for them and that the government is unable to make a difference when it matters. I am determined to change that. I want to see every part of government and every part of society work together on this issue. And early next year, I will bring together experts from across the UK and around the world for a summit to find new solutions.

    My daughters challenged me that evening to do my bit so every woman can live their life free from fear. That is a responsibility I take very seriously both as a man and as Prime Minister. Together, we can change our culture, make our country safer and bring back hope.

  • Andy Burnham – 2026 Statement on Flooding on Nepal-China Border

    Andy Burnham – 2026 Statement on Flooding on Nepal-China Border

    The statement made by Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, on 26 August 2026.

    These scenes emerging from along the Nepal-China border are devastating. My thoughts are with all those affected, including the families and loved ones of British nationals missing in this tragedy.

    We will do everything we can to support British nationals impacted in the region and are in touch with the relevant authorities to offer support.

    I urge British nationals in the region to follow guidance from the local authorities and follow our travel advice.

  • Andy Burnham – 2026 Comments on Ending Homelessness

    Andy Burnham – 2026 Comments on Ending Homelessness

    The comments made by Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, on 19 August 2026.

    No-one should have to bed down in a doorway or outside a station. But we’ve seen it for so long that it feels like Westminster has started to accept it.

    I won’t accept it. That’s why my first instruction as Prime Minister was to end rough sleeping. And it’s why today we’re getting started with a national drive to get everyone in for Christmas.

    We did it in the pandemic. We can do it again. But it needs all of us. Government will put the money in. But I’m asking leaders in communities and sectors across society to play their part locally too.

    Let’s get people out the cold. And let’s bring back hope.

  • Andy Burnham – 2026 Comments on T-Level Results

    Andy Burnham – 2026 Comments on T-Level Results

    The comments made by Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, on 13 August 2026.

    I want to congratulate everyone receiving their results today. I know there will have been a mix of excitement, nerves and relief this morning, but you should all be proud of the hard work that got you here.

    It’s brilliant to see more students succeeding in T Levels, more taking maths and STEM subjects, and more young people progressing to the next stage of their education or training.

    The talent is there in every town and city in this country. Our task is to match that talent with opportunity, whether that’s through university, an apprenticeship or a technical pathway that leads to a great career. That’s how we’ll build a stronger Britain, restore hope and ensure every young person can look to the future with confidence.

  • Andy Burnham – 2026 Comments on the High Street

    Andy Burnham – 2026 Comments on the High Street

    The comments made by Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, on 11 August 2026.

    For many people, the high streets they grew up with have been hollowed out and become unrecognisable over decades of decline. The rise of vape shops, betting shops and rogue operators have replaced the shops, services, and community spaces that people are crying out for. 

    That’s not on. I said we would improve Britain’s high streets, and that’s exactly what we are starting to do. We’re putting communities back in control and giving local people a real say over what opens on their high street. Local councils will be given the powers they need to rein in unwanted shops and bring town centres back to life.

    High streets are the beating heart of local communities, but for too long Westminster has stood by while they have been in decline. This government is committed to restoring our high streets and bringing back hope across Britain.

  • Andy Burnham – 2026 Comments on Social Care

    Andy Burnham – 2026 Comments on Social Care

    The comments made by Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister on 28 July 2026.

    Last week I said we needed a different kind of politics: problem-solving, not point-scoring. Nowhere is that more urgent than social care.

    For decades, governments have kicked this issue down the road because they’ve seen it as too risky, too difficult, and too complicated.

    Politicians might have different views but I’m serious about fixing this issue and to do that, we have to find common ground and listen to others to find a way forward.

    It’s time to draw a line under people playing politics when the human cost of that means carers struggling, families paying the price and our NHS buckling under the strain.

    This comes down to a choice. We can carry on passing the problem to the next generation, or we can face it head on and work together to build a care system that gives people dignity, security and the support they deserve.

    This is about bringing back hope that we can finally fix the difficult issues that have been ignored for too long, and making Britain believe again.

    That’s why I’m making this choice and I’m prepared to put everything I’ve got behind it.