On Tuesday in Liverpool, Labour leader Andy Burnham is set to reveal a new government entity dedicated to investing in Britain’s electricity network during his opening conference address. The new publicly owned enterprise will carry the name Great British Grid, or GB Grid.
Grid hook-ups should move faster because the body wants more companies to compete for connection work. Burnham plans to make these proposals central to a new target: getting UK energy prices closer to what other European countries pay within ten years.
The plan for funding the new NHS-style social care system for England, which was announced over the weekend, will be explained in full by him.
A New Grid Body
The state-owned GB Grid will now pursue and compete for transmission connection projects side by side with the three private firms that presently own and run the country’s grid. The founding of GB Grid is being presented as the first major step toward greater public control of utilities, a priority that Burnham placed at the heart of his bid for power throughout the summer.
Burnham says that faster connections might help address a “cost crisis” in energy that has proved “crippling for businesses”.
Labour has not yet laid out all the details of the new body, but it has said that the organisation will help businesses waiting to be linked up with financial connection infrastructure. The body will work with such projects and may also invest alongside them.
The money for the new organisation will be found inside the current budget of GB Energy, the public green investment company created by Labour last year, which is now based in Aberdeen.
The Cost of Connection
The energy regulator Ofgem has estimated that roughly £70bn of investment will be needed in the grid between 2025 and 2031, which would more than double the current pace of spending. A separate report from the National Audit Office found that the backlog of projects waiting to connect to the grid had grown “significantly”, while delays to those projects were also on the rise.
In his speech, Burnham is expected to say GB Grid will “work with the private sector and network companies” to “reform a broken energy market”.
He will append a remark, namely “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.”.
Paying for Social Care
Ahead of the speech, Burnham has promised an “honest conversation” with voters about difficult subjects, alongside the overall message of “hope”. He has said he initially wanted to “give the usual tub-thumping conference speech” but that “the patriot in me tells me something very different is needed”.
The law demands that the next general election take place no later than August 2029, and free social care services for all people living in England are scheduled to begin from 2030.
Some have suggested that the prime minister might reconsider the triple lock on state pension increases, which ties annual rises to the highest of 2.5%, inflation, or average earnings growth, so that funds can be redirected toward social care plans.
Chancellor John Healey declined to guarantee the triple lock would feature in the party’s blueprint for voters at the next election. He told BBC Radio 5 Live: “The manifesto will be the manifesto at the time, I’m not going to do that now.”
The Numbers Behind the Plan
The announcement concerns a grid under increasing strain. As electricity production shifts away from large fossil fuel plants toward more distant renewable sources, such as offshore windfarms, Britain’s ageing transmission grid will need extensive rewiring in the years ahead.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | Burnham’s first party conference speech as Labour leader |
| August 2029 | Next general election must be held by |
| 2030 | Free social care services for everyone in England rolled out |
- £70bn of investment required in the grid between 2025 and 2031
- £70bn is quadruple the current rate of investment
- National Audit Office: project delays are increasing and the backlog has grown “significantly”
- Funding for GB Grid comes from within GB Energy’s existing budget
What the Announcement Means
On Tuesday, the announcement will be put to the test in Liverpool. The speech will make plain how the party intends to fund its commitments, and it will give voters a firmer sense of what GB Grid is meant to achieve.
One detail to keep an eye on is that the money for the new body does not represent new spending, since it comes from within GB Energy’s existing budget.
The direction of travel is plain to see. Burnham has placed public control of utilities at the heart of his bid for office, and GB Grid stands as the first real step toward that goal.
Where the paper stands
The paper backs the public ownership of the grid entity itself as an honest way to fund it, but is against the idea of the rich paying more unless citizens get a real vote on how that money is spent line by line. The announcement marks a genuine shift toward public control of utilities, and the paper supports that ambition, even as it raises questions about the practical mechanics of competing with private firms.
The funding detail matters here: the money for GB Grid comes from within GB Energy’s existing budget, meaning there is no new tax or charge to voters in this announcement. That is a reasonable start, though it leaves open the question of whether the public body can truly compete effectively with private firms.
The key test will be whether GB Grid can actually accelerate connections and bring down costs for businesses. The promise of increased competition sounds good, but the logic that a public competitor will automatically drive down costs for consumers is thin and worth watching closely. The paper will continue to follow the rollout of the new body and the claims made for it.
Source material: “Burnham to unveil public body to invest in electricity grid,” the BBC.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.