Andy Burnham has put the Burnham cost of business agenda at the centre of his pre-Budget messaging, telling the Financial Times he wants to ‘make life easier’ for firms rather than pile on fresh burdens. The remarks come as the private sector braces for the Budget on 28 October, the earliest date Burnham said his government ‘realistically could have done’.
In a Wednesday interview, Burnham acknowledged the fiscal position was ‘challenging’ but pushed back on speculation that a wave of business tax rises was imminent. ‘I’m not coming into this role thinking how do we make life harder? I’m trying to make life easier for people. How do I take pressure off? How do I meaningfully deal with the cost of living and the cost of business?’ he told the paper.
He added that people ‘shouldn’t read into me giving that answer that all kinds of things are coming’, a direct attempt to cool anxiety among investors and owners of small and medium-sized companies who fear they will again be tapped to fill a gap in the public finances.
Business costs and the Budget arithmetic
The concern is not without basis. Research by the British Chambers of Commerce, one of the country’s largest industry groups, suggests that government policies over the last decade have pushed up costs on businesses by about 70 per cent. Burnham said he was ‘acutely conscious of how hard the operating environment is for businesses, big and small’.
Estimates of the government’s fiscal headroom vary widely. Several City economists have put it at around £15bn, reflecting the drag from rising energy prices. The Resolution Foundation, a left-leaning think tank, calculates the figure at closer to £8bn. The gap between those two numbers will shape how much room Burnham and his Chancellor actually have to manoeuvre before the Budget.
That Chancellor is John Healey, who according to Grant Thornton is the new Chancellor of the UK. Healey is not without Treasury experience: Grant Thornton notes he held junior ministerial roles at the Treasury between 2002 and 2007, before later serving as defence minister. His institutional knowledge of the department may prove an asset as the government finalises its tax and spending decisions.
Burnham has already moved on a handful of cost-of-living measures. BBC News reports that he described policies announced so far, including capping bus fares at £2 and cutting VAT on household electricity bills, as ‘the first steps that I’ve felt able to make’, language that implies further measures are being considered but have not yet been finalised.
Relief for hospitality and the Burnham cost of business approach in practice
One such step has already been taken in the hospitality sector. According to the UK Parliament House of Commons Library, on 23 July 2026 Burnham announced an additional 20 per cent relief for pubs, clubs and live music venues, to take effect from 2027/28. The move gives some of the sectors most squeezed by rising costs a concrete, if forward-dated, commitment from the new government.
Parliament returns within days, giving ministers roughly a two-month run-in to the Budget itself, and the pressure on Burnham to show his cost-of-business credentials is only likely to increase in that period.
EU trade and the North Sea
Beyond the Budget, Burnham used the Financial Times interview to signal that a trade summit with the European Union is set for November, having previously been scheduled for July before Sir Keir Starmer resigned. He suggested that boosting trade with the EU would ‘add percentage points’ to the UK growth rate, echoing his predecessor’s position, while stopping well short of suggesting the UK would rejoin the customs union or single market, which Labour’s 2024 election manifesto listed as a ‘red line’.
On energy, rising costs have intensified calls from North Sea operators for new drilling permits. Decisions on licences at the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields are expected within days. Burnham said he backed comments from Labour donor Dale Vince suggesting that North Sea drilling could ‘make sense’ if further price controls are introduced, a carefully bounded position that neither rules out new licences nor abandons the party’s green commitments.
He also framed his interest in ‘public control’ over utilities such as water and energy not as a push for outright nationalisation but as a means of creating, in his words, ‘the most benign investment environment for companies’.
