Favourite to become UK’s next PM also promises ’biggest council house building programme since the post-war period’
Andy Burnham has set out his vision to set up an outpost of the prime minister’s office in Manchester which will function as the “nerve centre of a rewired Britain”.
The man expected to become prime minister as soon as next month said the “Number 10 North” office would work to extend devolution to local and combined authorities across the country, including in London, in an effort to spread economic growth as part of a programme called “Manchesterism”.
Speaking in Manchester this morning, the city’s former mayor said the operation would be the “conduit through which we redistribute power and resources across the UK”.
“We will bring about the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen. It is time for Whitehall to accept that growth cannot be ordered from the top down, instead it can only be nurtured from the bottom up,” Burnham said.
He also pledged to deliver the “biggest council house building programme since the post-war period”, confirming an ambition which he first mentioned earlier this year.
The building programme, to be overseen by Number 10 North, will seek to reduce costs by using vacant public land and bring higher density residential development across the UK’s towns, Burnham said.
Number 10 North will be given three “clear tasks,” Burnham said: reforming essential utilities; reindustrialisation and regeneration of places, to be delivered through a series of new 10-year plans which regional authorities will be required to write.
Regions will be told to set “clear and credible” industrial ambitions, inspired by similar initiatives seen in Cambridge and Manchester on life sciences, with public and private investment to be coordinated to support growth plans at a “place-based level”.
Burnham also pledged to provide a “much greater supply” of 45-day work placements and apprenticeships for young people as part of a strategy to reduce the UK’s rising benefits bill by getting more people into work.
He appeared to counter pressure from opposition parties to call a general election to provide a mandate for a significant programme of change, insisting that his proposals were “consistent with the 2024 manifesto” on which the current Labour government was elected.
However, he said his plans for Number 10 North would oversee the “biggest change in our lifetimes to the way the country is run”, adding: “Let me say this very directly, the days of Whitehall fighting the devolution power into the regions and nations are over for good.”
The speech comes one week after Keir Starmer announced his resignation as prime minister and Labour party leader following Burnham’s victory in the Makerfield by-election.
If no contender comes forward to challenge Burnham in a leadership election by 16 July, Burnham is expected to become prime minister on 20 July.
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