Andy Burnham

speaker

817 appearances 93 recordings 12 series first heard Oct 2025 last heard 9 Sep

Andy Burnham’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 93 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 43.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Newscast · The Andy Burnham Interview · 27 Jul 2026 podcast

is to ensure that the defence investment plan is fully funded and that's the thing that's right in front of us and we need to work that through as we go towards the budget later this year.

Well, I think that's a little unfair because I was standing in Downing Street just a few days ago talking about the crucial importance of Britain honouring its commitments on defence, its NATO commitments, to international partners.

You know, I'm really, really very clear about that.

I'm absolutely committed to what we've promised our NATO partners, and that is my commitment.

Now, we've got to work out the way of doing that, but I do not want to see Britain regarded as a country that people can't trust anymore.

I don't think anyone wants us to be in that position.

Well, I wouldn't necessarily go straight to blaming those people.

What I would say is that there are people in the benefits system, young people in their 20s, who have been, I would say, quite seriously let down.

because the support wasn't there for them when it should have been there.

So I'm talking about a school system that doesn't have the right support for young people with special educational needs or disabilities.

I'm talking about an education system

that for a very long time has been obsessed on the university route but hasn't done enough, important point, hasn't done enough for young people who want technical qualifications and in many ways has treated them as second-class students, hasn't done enough for young people at 16 who want to get an apprenticeship, a work-related opportunity and that all leaves people in a position when they get to their late teenage years

that they don't know where life is taking them.

So I don't blame them.

I don't think the support has been there for them in the way that it should have been.

It's about changing the nature of the support and making some of the support conditional upon people taking opportunities that are presented in front of them.

I think it's a good thing that the government has given guarantees of opportunities for young people and I think we need to

continue down that approach and where mental health support is needed for instance it's provided in work to support people in an opportunity let me just say something more though about what you're driving at which is the welfare bill I think we've got to get really serious as a country at getting the welfare bill down and one of the things I would point to was the sell-off of social and council homes

in the 1980s onwards that has left us chasing rents in the private rented sector through the benefit system, which means we've got a very high housing benefit bill in this country and the building of new council and social homes over time will help get that benefit bill down in a fair and sustainable way.

And I think the thing I'm just pushing back on is this idea that we go to a kind of crude approach, crude cuts to benefits to get the welfare bill down.

Showing 241–260 of 817 · page 13 of 41