Kemi Badenoch has accused Andy Burnham of governing like he is still the mayor of Greater Manchester, saying his early announcements amount to a "spending spree" of promises. The Conservative leader said the new prime minister had not explained how a series of measures announced in his first days in office could be funded.
Burnham's early policies include restoring a £2 cap on bus fares in England and cutting VAT on household electricity bills. Labour defended the announcements, saying he was "bringing back hope after Kemi Badenoch's Tory Party nearly broke Britain".
Burnham told his newly assembled cabinet on Tuesday "we need to be a cost of living government" and has described his policy blitz as a first step to give people "breathing space", promising further support when wider tax and spending decisions are made. Alongside the bus fare cap and energy VAT cut, he has also announced plans to cut business rates paid by pubs and live music venues and find more accommodation to house rough sleepers, with the measures projected to cost around £1.8bn in total.
The government says the plans, which it says will be funded through a combination of savings, reallocation of money within existing budgets and future tax hikes on "anti-social businesses", have been properly accounted for. But in a speech in London on Thursday, Badenoch said Burnham needed to be clearer about where his savings would come from and called on him to rule out tax rises at the autumn Budget.
"Every day, Andy Burnham seems to float a new, expensive idea," she said. "We have seen this movie before. Tax rises are coming".
Burnham, who became Greater Manchester's first elected mayor in 2017, has sought to place his near decade-long record in charge of the city-region at the centre of his Downing Street agenda. As mayor, he kept a £2 bus fare cap in place when the Starmer government raised the England-wide limit to £3 at the start of last year.
He has also pointed to Greater Manchester's bus operating model, in which private bus firms bid to run services franchised by the local transport authority, as a possible model for regulating the water and energy sectors. Badenoch said the new prime minister needed to "lift his sights to broader things", and called on him to set out how defence spending would be funded and how the cost of energy for businesses would be reduced.
"Andy Burnham's ambitions for Britain are too small," she said.
"When you are mayor of Manchester, you are handed a big pot of someone else's money, and you decide where to spend it.
"I'm sure this is great fun. It can make you very popular. But it is not the same as being prime minister".
"Andy Burnham needs to do better. He is behaving like he's still the mayor of Manchester. He is now the prime minister of the United Kingdom, he needs to start acting like it."
A bit rich
The Greater Manchester mayorality, created under the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government, came with responsibilities in areas such as transport, planning, skills and economic development. Although it is part-funded through some local taxation, the majority of its budget comes from central government and the powers of the mayor over taxation are fairly limited.
Burnham has set out plans to hand city-regions more control in areas including housing and transport, and has promised to unveil a 10-year plan for the economy later this year. Former chancellor Rachel Reeves had set out an ambition to give regional mayors control of a share of income tax raised in their areas before she was sacked, with details set to be announced at this autumn's Budget.
The Liberal Democrats said Burnham's policies would not deliver growth, but added that the Tory leader's speech was "a bit rich... given the Conservatives' legacy of record high taxes, low-growth and spaffing taxpayers' money up the wall".
