Labour Party leadership contender Andy Burnham has set out plans for an acceleration of devolution if he becomes prime minister, including a rebalancing of power that will see departments compelled to help councils with staff and resources.
In a speech at the People’s History Museum in Manchester this morning, Burnham ran through his vision for change, if – as expected – he succeeds outgoing PM Keir Starmer next month.
His widely trailed plans include the creation of a prime minister’s office in Manchester, to be known as No.10 North. The recently elected MP for Makerfield and former Greater Manchester mayor also pledged the “biggest rebalancing of power this country has seen”.
Burnham, who was a New Labour minister and served as health secretary under Gordon Brown, said Westminster and Whitehall are “set up for conflict” and “require radical change if the country is to get back on track”.
“Like parliament, the civil service is full of good people trying to do the right thing,” he said. “But they are held back by the structure and the culture in which they have to work.
“It is too adversarial and too much time is wasted with departmental silos battling each other and battling the Treasury rather than getting things done.”
He asked: “How can the country pull in the same direction when that is the reality at the top?”
Burnham complained of experiencing department-level pushback during his time as Greater Manchester mayor and said that while national government has grown in size in recent years, local government has become “threadbare”.
Burnham said it is “time for Whitehall to accept that growth cannot be ordered from the top down”.
He said that as prime minister, he would “create a more streamlined state with a clearer purpose, to power up all parts of the country and put a laser-like focus on growth and regeneration”.
As part of that vision, Burnham said government departments and agencies would be compelled “to support strategic and local authorities with staffing and resources” in line with making place-based collaboration “the new operating principle for UK plc”.
He added: “The whole of Whitehall will now be required to get behind our places and work together with them to make quicker, more joined up decisions.”
No.10 North
Ushering in a new era of devolution is one of the areas that will be overseen by No.10 North, which Burnham said would be set up as “an extended operation” based in Manchester. He stressed that the office would have UK-wide reach, despite its name.
“It will only be based here,” Burnham said “The job of No.10 North will be to make power flow into the Midlands, into the South West, into the East of England and – yes – into London. As well as to the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber and here in the North West.
“It will be about offering new opportunities to extend devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by taking power deeper down.
“No.10 North will be the nerve centre of a rewired Britain. It will be the conduit through which we redistribute power and resources through the UK.
“It will coordinate all parts of government at national and local level to agree a long-term economic strategy and help all places set new growth ambitions.”
In addition to facilitating better place-based collaboration, Burnham said No.10 North would lead the regions on a “10-year mission to raise living standards”, through reform of utilities, reindustrialisation and regeneration.
In particular, Burnham pledged to introduce “proper social-value weighting” for contracts agreed under the pending Defence Investment Plan to build UK resilience – as well as similar approaches for steel, energy and farming.
Towards the end of his speech, Burnham promised that No.10 North will oversee the biggest council-house building programme for 70 years.
He said Britain has lost almost 1.5 million council homes since the 1980s, adding that the nation’s wider housing crisis is having a “ruinous” impact on public finances.
“Working with local areas, No.10 North will oversee the biggest council-house building programme since the postwar period,” he said.
Burnham added that vacant public land would be used to reduce costs. He said a secure council home and a good technical education used to be a staple of working class life, but has been “taken away” over the past few decades.
“No wonder so many young people struggle to make it work,” he said. “Don’t blame them, blame ourselves: we haven’t been giving people this stability, this ability to get on in life. And it’s time we did.”
Burnham did not say how many new council homes he anticipates could be built as part of his 10-year plan.
However, at the peak of the postwar council-housing boom in the 1950s, some 200,000 council homes were being delivered every year.
More recently, annual delivery of new council homes has been in the low thousands – although social and “affordable” homes for rent are also provided by housing associations.