One Week In: What’s Burnham Done?

In a speech in front of No .10 Downing Street last week, Andy Burnham attempted to differentiate himself from his predecessor Keir Starmer.His government, he claimed, would bring forward the biggest changes in 40 years.Later in the speech, he stated, rather than paying for failure.And added that the work starts now.So a week on, how is Burnham getting on?What policies has he announced?

Who do they impact?And how will they be paid for?Let's take a look.

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Now, Burnham's first two announcements as Prime Minister came from the same speech he made in front of Number 10 last Monday.The first was a promise that later in the year his government will bring forward, quote, a new plan for Britain, a 10 -year plan, laying out a path from where we are now to where I believe we all want Britain to be.Unfortunately, though, this is all the detail we have.Perhaps had Burnham become leader later in the year, as was suggested he would have preferred, this would have been a bit more fleshed out.For now, however, we'll just have to sit tight and wait to see what this 10 -year plan is.The second announcement in the speech was a pledge to end rough sleeping, with him later announcing £340 million which will be used to provide 1 ,200 homes and support to 3 ,000 people.

Now, while this might not be the largest amount of money, London alone spent £5 .5 million a day on homelessness last year, the government did clarify that this is simply an opening investment.leaving open the possibility of further support in the future.These were his Day 1 promises.But the following day, on Tuesday, Burnham announced another two key policies, aimed at tackling the cost of living.The first of these is related to energy bills.The Prime Minister announced that from the 1st of October, the 5 % VAT payment on energy will be scrapped for households in England, Wales and Scotland, with separate funding being given to Northern Ireland, as it's regulated differently.

Saving households on average £45 a year.In order to pay for this, the government announced that they would scrap the digital ID scheme, which they claim was going to cost £1 .8 billion over the next three years.However, while all of this sounds good on the surface, there are two broad criticisms.The first was made by Darren Jones, the former Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister under Keir Starmer, who claimed that the digital ID scheme was actually unfunded and, as a result, Burnham can't simply reallocate funding from it for his new cut to VAT on energy.And in fairness, it seems like Jones is broadly right.The Office of Budget Responsibility, or OBR, claimed last year that no specific funding had been identified.

If Burnham really does want to push ahead with this then, and maintain economic credibility, he's going to have to find that money elsewhere.The second main criticism here is that scrapping VAT alone will not protect households from increasing energy prices.In October, the energy price cap is expected to rise again, with some experts predicting that it will be increased by 2%, mainly as a result of the war in Iran.For households not on fixed rate tariffs, this will mean even with the VAT cut, their bills will still rise.Nonetheless, it seems that the public are overwhelmingly in favour of this measure, with a YouGov poll showing that 78 % of people support this policy.In fact, the policy is supported by a majority of voters from each of the main political parties.

The second policy announced by Burnham on Tuesday was a £2 price cap on bus fares.As things stand, bus fares across England are capped at £3 until 2021.although it's worth pointing out that the cap actually used to be £2 between January 2023 and December 2024, before Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves increased it to £3 in 2024.The cap will apply to all of England, other than London, where the cap is already £1 .75, and funding will be allocated to the other devolved nations to allow them to introduce something similar.The fare cap for England alone is expected to cost the Treasury around £454m, with around £50m coming from savings in the Department for Energy and Net Zero.The other £400m will come from switching international investment in climate finance to loans.

Already this has caused some controversy, with Romilly Greenhill, the CEO of Bond, a network of UK NGOs working on international development, claiming that Burnham was continuing to raid the diminished UK aid budget, and arguing that he's pitting marginalised communities in the UK against those in countries vulnerable to the climate crisis.Again though, this policy is proving popular with the electorate, with YouGov again showing that 83 % of people support the measure.They also show that the majority of voters in each of the main parties support the policy.So those were the policies announced on Tuesday.But on Thursday, Burnham then turned his attention to pubs and prisons.His first policy announced was a 20 % reduction in business rates for pubs, clubs and music venues.

This will take effect from April, and it's estimated that a typical pub will save around £1 ,100 next financial year, and that the scheme will benefit around 32 ,000 venues.It's estimated that this will cost £100m, with the government claiming that this will be funded by a review on tax relief for firms such as vape shops, which do not make a positive contribution to local communities.The second policy announced related to the Sentencing Act of 2026, which was designed to allow some prisoners to be released early in order to address capacity issues.While it made a number of changes, such as the introduction of a presumption of a suspended sentence in terms of imprisonment lessthan 12 months, extending the scope of suspended sentences and allowing more prisoners to be released on licence, it's the stipulation that offenders can be released even earlier that's caused the most controversy.From the 2nd of September, offenders who would have been eligible for release halfway through their sentence would have been eligible for release a third of the way through, and those eligible two -thirds into their sentence would have been eligible halfway through.

However, in a statement, Burnham said that no prisoners will be let out under this policy until we've conducted an urgent review and done everything we can to minimise risks to the public.While it doesn't rule out early releases, it does seem to make them less likely.With the exact terms of Burnham's changes not known, it's hard to estimate what impact they'll have on prison capacity though.busy one.

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