Andy Burnham will take his first major step to putting Britain’s utility companies into public control when, at the Labour conference, he announces a new government-backed body to invest in the electricity grid. The prime minister will use his first speech as party leader to announce the creation of GB Grid, which will use money previously allocated to Great British Energy to compete with privately owned companies such as National Grid. In a speech focusing heavily on undoing what the prime minister calls “40 years of neoliberalism”, he will promise greater public control of energy, water and housing.
He is also set to lay out more details on how he will pay for his pledge to create a national care service, with senior ministers refusing to rule out scrapping the pensions triple lock after the next election to free funding. Government sources have suggested Burnham would signal his willingness to review the policy, but stop short of a pledge to scrap it altogether. Burnham will tell the conference on Tuesday: “We have a cost crisis.
The price of energy is crippling for businesses, and British bill payers pay some of the highest energy costs in Europe. Once again, the British public has lost control.” He will add: “Within 10 years, I want our energy costs to be in line with other nations in Europe. That means we must reform a broken energy market so it serves the public interest.” Burnham’s first conference speech as leader and prime minister caps a remarkable turnaround in his political fortunes since this time last year, when he was criticised by many in the party for talking openly about his desire to replace Keir Starmer.
Having ousted Starmer from office, Burnham has spent much of his first few weeks promising a radical shift in tone and policy. He will tell the conference on Tuesday: “We can’t carry on as we are. Politics as usual has taken Britain backwards.
More of the same isn’t good enough and isn’t going to get us where we need to be.” Though the conference has been upbeat, Burnham will tell Labour delegates he wanted to strike a serious tone with his speech and address some of the most intractable issues in British politics, such as social care, energy costs and youth inactivity. In the speech, the prime minister will say that he will resist “the usual tub-thumping conference speech … the patriot in me tells me something very different is needed”. He will say “everyone wants less drift and more direction” and that he will “answer that call” today.
His offer – expected to contain a number of new policies – will be “a more serious prospectus for Britain than people have been offered in a generation”. The creation of GB Grid is his first significant step to challenging the power of private companies to run Britain’s infrastructure. The organisation will be given access to a pot of £4bn that has already been allocated to the government-backed Great British Energy – although it is not expected to use all of that money.
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