Burnham to Launch 'Great British Grid' in Landmark Conference Speech

Andy Burnham will use his first party conference address as Labour leader to announce the creation of a new publicly owned company tasked with investing in Britain's electricity grid, in what is being positioned as a defining moment for his vision of greater state involvement in critical national infrastructure.

The prime minister is expected to tell activists gathered in Liverpool on Tuesday afternoon that the new body, to be branded Great British Grid, will accelerate the process of connecting projects to the electricity network by stimulating competition among those seeking to build transmission links.

According to the plans, the company would operate alongside the three private firms that currently own and manage the grid across Britain, investing in connection projects and bidding for them in much the same way as commercial operators. The precise structure and remit of the organisation have yet to be finalised, but Labour has indicated that it will also support businesses awaiting grid connections to finance their own infrastructure, with GB Grid potentially taking a co-investment stake in such schemes.

Funding for the initiative is expected to be drawn from within the existing budget of GB Energy, the public green investment vehicle established by Labour last year and now based in Aberdeen. That detail is likely to be central to the government's argument that the new body can be created without additional borrowing at a time when the public finances are under considerable strain.

Burnham is expected to present the creation of GB Grid as the first major step in a broader ambition to extend public control over utilities, a theme he placed at the heart of his leadership campaign during the summer. He will argue that faster connections to the grid can help resolve what he describes as a cost crisis in energy that has been crippling for businesses across the country.

In his remarks, the prime minister is expected to say that GB Grid will work with the private sector and network companies to reform what he characterises as a broken energy market. He will add that the body will increase competition to drive down costs and speed up delivery so that businesses can connect faster and grow quicker, describing this as an illustration of what greater public control can achieve.

The announcement comes against a backdrop of mounting concern about the state of Britain's transmission infrastructure. The shift in electricity generation away from large fossil fuel plants towards more remote renewable sources, including offshore wind farms, means the country's ageing grid will require extensive rewiring in the years ahead.

Ofgem, the energy regulator, has estimated that investment of around seventy billion pounds will be needed in the grid between 2025 and 2031, a figure that would represent a fourfold increase on the current rate of spending. In a report published earlier this month, the National Audit Office warned that the queue of projects waiting to connect to the grid had grown significantly, while delays to those projects were also becoming more pronounced.

The prime minister is also expected to use the speech to set out how he intends to pay for the new NHS-style social care system for England that he unveiled over the weekend. Ahead of the address, he promised to reveal details of how he plans to fund free social care services for everyone in England, a commitment he has said he wants to put before voters at the next general election.

That election must legally be held by August 2029 at the latest, and Burnham has indicated that he would aim to begin rolling out the new system from 2030. The pledge has raised questions about where the money will come from, particularly given the pressure on public spending and the recent rise in the cost of UK borrowing, which has narrowed the government's room for manoeuvre ahead of a difficult Budget at the end of next month.

Speculation has grown that Burnham could signal a willingness to review the triple lock on state pensions as part of efforts to free up future funding for his social care plans. The policy, which guarantees that pension payments rise each year by the highest of 2.5 per cent, inflation or average wage growth, is expected to add billions to the cost of pensions in the coming years as the UK's population ages.

On Monday, Chancellor John Healey declined to guarantee that the commitment, which has appeared in every Labour manifesto since 2015, would be retained in the party's next election blueprint. Asked about the matter, he told BBC Radio 5 Live that the manifesto would be the manifesto at the time, adding that he was not prepared to make such a commitment now.

Burnham is expected to promise an honest conversation with voters about difficult subjects during his speech, while maintaining the overall message of hope that has served as the theme of the four-day gathering. He is likely to say that he initially wanted to deliver the usual rousing conference speech, but that his sense of patriotism told him something very different was required.

The address represents a significant moment for the prime minister, coming as it does at a point when his government faces difficult economic choices and when his personal authority within the party is still being established. By placing public ownership and control of energy infrastructure at the centre of his conference message, Burnham appears to be attempting to define his leadership in terms that resonate with traditional Labour supporters while also addressing the practical concerns of businesses struggling with energy costs.

The success of the GB Grid proposal will depend heavily on how quickly it can deliver tangible improvements to a connection system that analysts say has become a serious obstacle to investment in renewable energy and wider industrial growth. Whether the new body can genuinely accelerate projects while working alongside existing private operators remains an open question, and opposition parties are likely to press the government on how the initiative will be funded and what safeguards will prevent it from duplicating work already under way.