Burnham to unveil public body to invest in electricity grid
The prime minister will say he wants to reduce energy costs in his first conference speech as Labour leader.
Burnham to unveil public body to invest in electricity grid
Andy Burnham is expected to announce a new government body to invest in Britain’s electricity grid in his first party conference speech as Labour leader on Tuesday.
The prime minister will tell party activists in Liverpool that the new publicly owned company, branded Great British Grid, will speed up grid hook-ups by increasing competition for connection projects.
He is expected to place the plans at the centre of a new aim to bring UK energy costs into line with those in other European countries within ten years.
He has also promised to use the speech to set out how he plans to pay for the new NHS-style social care system for England that he announced over the weekend.
Burnham is expected to present the creation of GB Grid as the first major step in his drive for greater public control of utilities, which he made central to his pitch for power over the summer.
He is expected to say that quicker connections to the electricity grid could help address a "cost crisis" in energy that has proved "crippling for businesses".
Full details of the new body have yet to be announced, but Labour said it would invest in and compete for transmission connection projects alongside the three private companies that currently own and manage Britain’s grid.
The party said it would also make it easier for firms waiting to be connected to the grid to fund connection infrastructure themselves, with GB Grid supporting and potentially co-investing in projects alongside them.
Labour has said funding for the new body will come from within the existing budget of GB Energy, the public green investment company established by Labour last year and now based in Aberdeen.
The shift in electricity generation from large fossil fuel stations to the more remote sites used for renewables, such as offshore windfarms, will require Britain’s ageing transmission grid to be extensively rewired in the coming years.
Energy regulator Ofgem has estimated that £70bn of investment is needed in the grid between 2025 and 2031, which would quadruple the current rate of investment.
But in a report earlier this month, the National Audit Office warned that the number of projects waiting to connect to the grid had risen "significantly" while delays to projects were also growing.
In his speech on Tuesday afternoon, Burnham is expected to say that GB Grid will "work with the private sector and network companies" to "reform a broken energy market".
He will add: "It will increase competition to drive down costs and speed up delivery so businesses can connect faster and grow quicker.
"This is what more public control can do."
Burnham’s speech will see him promise an "honest conversation" with voters about difficult issues, alongside the broader message of "hope" that he has made the theme of the four-day event.
He is expected to say that he initially wanted to "give the usual tub-thumping conference speech" but that "the patriot in me tells me something very different is needed".
It comes ahead of a difficult Budget at the end of next month, where the prime minister’s room for manoeuvre has been reduced by recent increases in the cost of UK borrowing.
Ahead of the speech, the prime minister has promised to reveal details of how he intends to fund his plans to provide free social care services to everyone in England.
He has said he wants to put his plans before voters at the next general election, which must legally be held by August 2029 at the latest, before seeking to roll out the new system from 2030.
There has been speculation that, in his efforts to free up future funding for his social care plans, the prime minister could signal a willingness to review the "triple lock" uprating policy for the state pension.
The policy - under which pension payments rise each year by the highest of 2.5%, inflation, or average wage rises - is expected to add billions to pension costs in future years because of the UK’s ageing population.
On Monday, Chancellor John Healey declined to guarantee that the promise - which has appeared in every Labour manifesto since 2015 - would be included in the party’s blueprint for voters at the next election.
"The manifesto will be the manifesto at the time, I'm not going to do that now," he told BBC Radio 5 Live.