Burnham’s First Days: Cost of Living, Opportunity and the Test of Delivery

In Westminster, the first week of any new Prime Minister is usually judged through the theatre: who walks through the black door, who gets promoted, who gets moved, who is seen, who is missing, and which faction is smiling in the corridors. 

I served alongside Andy Burnham in Parliament, and while the first ten days of any premiership cannot tell us everything about what follows, they can tell us something about political instinct. His has been clear: start with the pressures people feel most directly, then connect them to a wider plan for work, skills, living standards and place. 

Outside Westminster, people tend to ask a simpler question: will any of this make life easier? 

That is why Burnham’s first days in Number 10 matter. They do not yet amount to a settled programme for government, nor do they answer every question about funding, delivery or trade-offs. But they do suggest a willingness to begin with the things people notice: the cost of energy, the cost of transport, whether young people can find a route into work, and whether decisions are still being made too far away from the communities they affect. 

The immediate cost-of-living measures have been deliberately practical: removing VAT from household electricity bills from 1 October and restoring the £2 bus fare cap in England outside London from January 2027. 

None of this will transform household finances overnight. Families facing rent rises, food bills, debt, childcare costs and insecure hours will not suddenly feel comfortable because one bill is slightly lower. If government overclaims, it will quickly lose trust. 

But nor should these decisions be dismissed as symbolism. Energy and transport decide whether someone can keep the lights on, get to work, take a child to college, or attend a hospital appointment. Inflation may be easing, but the cumulative pressure on households remains real, particularly in places where wages, transport links and access to services have lagged behind for too long. 

As Shadow Minister for Mental Health, and from my time on the Health and Social Care Committee, I saw repeatedly that poverty rarely stays neatly in an economic box. It shows up in GP surgeries, mental health services, hospital discharge delays, missed appointments and preventable crises. 

A cold home is a health issue. A bus fare someone cannot afford is a health issue. Debt anxiety is a mental health issue. Women rationing basic products, missing school, work or appointments because the cost of living has stripped away dignity is a health issue too. That was the point I made in Parliament when raising period poverty and reports of girls in West Yorkshire missing school because they could not afford period products. Early intervention is not soft politics; it is usually the cheaper, fairer and more effective answer. 

The reported Health and Social Care North in Leeds matters to me personally as well as politically. Leeds is only a short journey from Dewsbury, the constituency I had the privilege of representing and my home, and from communities where the links between poverty, poor health, transport, work and public services are visible every day. If this is more than a rebadging exercise, it should bring decisions closer to the places where health problems are shaped long before someone reaches a hospital ward. 

The specific social care policy announcement today should be seen in the same light. Burnham has promised to speed up Baroness Louise Casey’s work on a National Care Service, launch a public “Big Conversation on Care”, and focus immediately on the care workforce, with Yvette Cooper, my old colleague and a close friend, chairing a new ministerial group on delivery. That matters because social care failure does not stay in social care: it fills hospital beds, delays discharge, puts pressure on families and leaves too many people without dignity or support. The test will be whether reform is genuinely preventative, locally led and connected to the wider health system. 

The same argument applies to young people who are not in education, employment or training. The latest ONS figures estimate that 1,012,000 young people aged 16 to 24 were NEET in January to March 2026, representing13.5% of that age group. That is not just a labour market statistic. It is a warning light for health, confidence, family finances, local economies and the future tax base. 

That is why the announcement on technical pathways matters. I did not go to university, and I have never believed that a young person’s worth, ambition or future should be measured by whether they follow a single academic route. For too long, technical education has been treated as the thing you do if something else has not worked out. That is wrong. For many young people, the right pathway is practical, local, skilled and connected to real employers. 

But this reform will only work if it is done carefully. Technical pathways must not become a polite way of tracking working-class children away from academic options. They must be high quality, properly resourced and genuinely linked to progression: apprenticeships, further education, skilled work, higher technical qualifications and, where it is right for the individual, university too. 

This is the work we have been doing at The Purpose Coalition since 2025 through the Opportunity & Place Commission, which I co-chair with Justine Greening: moving beyond national slogans and asking what stronger local routes from learning into work actually look like. Through sessions in places including Wolverhampton, Edinburgh and Redcar, we have brought together employers, educators, civic leaders and local voices to understand what helps, what blocks progress and what practical action is needed. 

The recent roundtable in Redcar with Rt Hon Anna Turley MP showed why this matters. Hosted at Redcar and Cleveland College, it brought together major North Eastemployers and education leaders to discuss how business can create jobs, strengthen skills pathways and make regional investment work for local communities. 

That is the thread running through Burnham’s first days: cost of living, transport, health, skills and devolution are being treated, rightly, as connected problems. An office in Manchester or a department in Leeds does not automatically change life in Dewsbury, Doncaster, Stoke, Sunderland, Redcar or Torbay. But it may change the way decisions are made if it gives local leaders, businesses, colleges, charities and public services a more serious role in shaping what happens next. 

And on women’s health, an issue which has defined my work inside and outside Parliament, the government should move with the same urgency as it has done these first weeks. At the start of 2026, RCOG warned that almost three-quarters of a million women remained on gynaecology waiting lists. If this is to be a government focused on life’s essentials, women’s health must be treated as one of them. That means protecting and expanding Women’s Health Hubs, cutting waits for gynaecology care, taking period poverty seriously, and recognising that cost of living, work, education and health are not separate debates. 

The first days of a premiership are not the same as a record. But they can tell us about direction. Burnham has started by asking the right questions: what does government do when people cannot afford the basics, when young people cannot see a route forward, and when whole places feel decisions are made too far away? 

The answer now has to be delivery. Delivery that reaches families, young people, those waiting for care, and places that have heard enough speeches about opportunity but seen too little of it in practice.