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 billed as the opening move of a broader ambition to extend public control over the country's utilities.

The prime minister is expected to tell activists gathered in Liverpool on Tuesday that the new body, to be called Great British Grid, will accelerate the pace at which energy projects can connect to the transmission network by introducing greater competition into a system long dominated by private operators.

According to the plans, the company would invest in and bid for transmission connection projects alongside the three private firms that currently own and manage the grid across Britain. It would also make it easier for developers stuck in connection queues to finance infrastructure themselves, with GB Grid offering support and the option of co-investment.

Funding for the new entity is expected to be drawn from within the existing budget of GB Energy, the public green investment company Labour established last year and which is now based in Aberdeen. Full operational details have yet to be published, and the government has not indicated a precise timetable for the body's launch.

The announcement forms the centrepiece of a wider goal to bring UK energy costs into line with those of other European nations within a decade. Burnham is expected to argue that faster grid connections are essential to resolving what he describes as a cost crisis in energy that has proven crippling for businesses.

The speech will also serve as a platform for the prime minister to set out how he intends to pay for the NHS-style social care system for England that he unveiled over the weekend. He has said he wants to present the plans to voters at the next general election, which must legally be held by August 2029, before beginning a rollout from 2030.

Burnham has framed the creation of GB Grid as the first significant step in his ambition to deliver greater public control of utilities, a theme he placed at the heart of his summer pitch for power. He is expected to say the body will work with the private sector and network companies to reform what he characterises as a broken energy market, increasing competition to drive down costs and speed up delivery so that businesses can connect faster and grow more quickly.

The proposals respond to long-standing concerns about the state of Britain's transmission infrastructure. As electricity generation shifts away from large fossil fuel stations towards more remote renewable sites, including offshore wind farms, the country's ageing grid will require extensive rewiring in the coming years.

Ofgem, the energy regulator, has estimated that £70bn of investment is needed in the grid between 2025 and 2031, a figure that would quadruple the current rate of spending. In a report published earlier this month, the National Audit Office warned that the number of projects waiting to connect to the grid had grown significantly, while delays to those projects were also increasing.

The scale of the challenge helps explain why the government is presenting competition as a lever for faster delivery. By allowing developers to finance connection infrastructure directly, ministers hope to bypass bottlenecks that have left viable renewable projects stranded for years. GB Grid's role as a co-investor could also reduce the risk carried by individual firms, potentially unlocking schemes that would otherwise struggle to attract private capital.

The political context surrounding the speech is delicate. The prime minister faces a difficult Budget at the end of next month, with room for manoeuvre narrowed by recent rises in the cost of UK borrowing. That fiscal pressure has fuelled speculation that Burnham could signal a willingness to review the triple lock on state pensions in order to free up future funding for social care.

The triple lock ensures pension payments rise annually by the highest of 2.5%, inflation, or average wage growth. Because of the UK's ageing population, the policy is expected to add billions to pension costs in future years, and it has featured in every Labour manifesto since 2015. On Monday, Chancellor John Healey declined to guarantee that the commitment would be included in the party's next election blueprint, telling BBC Radio 5 Live that the manifesto would be the manifesto at the time.

Burnham is expected to acknowledge the difficult choices ahead, promising what aides describe as an honest conversation with voters about challenging subjects. Allies say he initially considered delivering a traditional tub-thumping conference speech but concluded that the seriousness of the moment demanded a different approach, telling activists that the patriot in him pointed towards something else entirely.

The four-day gathering in Liverpool has been built around a message of hope, and the prime minister is likely to pair that optimism with warnings about the scale of the decisions required to stabilise public finances and overhaul key services. Energy policy, social care and the future of the pension system are all expected to feature as interconnected elements of that argument.

For businesses awaiting grid connections, the practical consequences of the announcement may matter more than the political theatre. Lengthy queues have become a significant obstacle for renewable developers, data centre operators and manufacturers seeking to electrify their operations. Industry figures have repeatedly called for reform of the connection process, arguing that delays inflate costs and deter investment.

Whether a new state-backed investor can meaningfully change that picture remains uncertain. The body will operate alongside incumbent network companies rather than replacing them, and its funding will come from an existing budget rather than fresh borrowing. Supporters argue that even a modest injection of competition could shift incentives across the market, while critics are likely to question whether the approach goes far enough to address structural problems in the grid.

What is clear is that Burnham intends to use his first conference speech as leader to set a distinctive direction on economic policy, one that places public ownership and intervention at the centre of the answer to Britain's energy challenges. The coming months, including the Budget and the publication of further detail on social care, will test whether that vision can withstand the fiscal and political pressures closing in on his government.