Fossil fuels, utilities and housing: what we know about Andy Burnham’s plans

As an incoming prime minister promising huge change, one of the strongest criticisms Andy Burnham has faced so far is that he has failed to provide the details of what he plans to do.

The new Labour leader, who will be made prime minister on Monday, has thus far set out a distinctly leftwing vision, while also pledging to be “pro-business”.

But in the absence of leadership contest hustings or opportunities for the media to subject him to probing interviews, there are gaps in what is known about his plans for government.

Here is what we do know so far.

Burnham has pledged to take more public control of key utilities such as water, a move that appears likely to begin with Britain’s largest water company, Thames Water.

He is also understood to be considering radical plans that could cut household energy bills by £130 a year and make running a heat pump cheaper than a gas boiler. The proposals would change the way household gas is charged and remove some policy levies from bills, at a cost of £3.2bn a year to the taxpayer.

Thames Water, which serves 16 million customers and has been on the brink of collapse for several years, will meanwhile be put into a special form of administration until a buyer is found, according to the Sunday Times.

Expect action, too, on transport policy. Burnham has said he would be informed by the transformation of the Greater Manchester bus network during his time as mayor, which included taking the system back under public control from private operators.

Speculation is rife that Burnham will announce fresh plans for drilling in the North Sea.

The Labour leader’s team has not publicly confirmed the details of its North Sea policies and whether they would involve new exploration licences or “tiebacks”, where offshore oil and gas fields are connected to already approved production facilities via pipelines.

In its 2024 manifesto, Labour pledged to honour existing exploration licences but not issue new ones.

The Guardian understands that the tieback arrangements would allow new drilling to take place without technically breaching the manifesto commitment, although any new activity is likely to anger some backbenchers and climate campaigners.

Even before his Makerfield byelection victory made him an MP again, Burnham’s allies had briefed that he would be supporting Shabana Mahmood’s controversial changes to the immigration system.

On Monday, and back in the House of Commons, he supported the government’s asylum changes, voting for legislation that has divided Labour MPs over plans to tighten the immigration system and reshape the appeals process.

While he has avoided laying out specific policies in the area in key speeches, he has said recently that net migration needs to fall further and spoken of how voters in Makerfield “raised their concerns about immigration”.

Burnham is expected to scrap Keir Starmer’s plans for digital ID cards in a “reset of priorities”, redirecting resources earmarked for the scheme towards tackling the cost of living.

The proposals were outlined at the weekend in an attempt to distance the incoming prime minister from unpopular choices made by his predecessor. A petition opposing the introduction of digital ID cards when it was announced last year attracted about 3m signatures.

Keir Starmer first announced the digital ID scheme last September, as part of a strategy to combat illegal working. It was to be introduced by 2029.

Burnham’s team have asked officials to draw up plans to abolish the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) as part of a wider Whitehall shake-up.

However, while the plans have triggered an angry backlash from MPs, Whitehall officials and others, a new cabinet on Monday is expected to include a minister for artificial intelligence for the first time.

The proposals in relation to the DSIT would hand over much of science and technology policy to a more powerful business department, to be led by the chief whip, Jonathan Reynolds.

The prime-minister-in-waiting highlighted fixing social care as a priority, vowing last week to “grasp the nettle” of adult social care reform.

Burnham first tried to change the social care system when he was Labour’s health secretary in 2009. At the time, he proposed a levy on estates to pay for universal social care, but he has since talked about replacing inheritance tax with a progressive “care levy” to fund a national care service.

Speaking to the Guardian on the campaign trail last month, he said: “I personally would look at all of the kind of implications of that in relation to inheritance tax and care charges and everything. I wouldn’t flinch from it.”

Burnham has said he wants the government led by him to “oversee the biggest council house building programme since the postwar period”.

The challenge is a major one, the scale of which is seemingly not lost on Burnham, who linked the loss of almost 1.5m council homes since the 1980s to the number of families on social housing waiting lists nationwide rising to a similar level.

In a hint of other plans, he has also said that high costs are having a “ruinous impact” on the government finances amid record levels of taxpayer support allocated to housing, much of which flows to private landlords.