Labour conference live: Andy Burnham says social care is as ‘unfair as American healthcare’ and will break the NHS

Healey reveals plans to get more British products and services bought abroad

The Government is launching a new scheme to encourage foreign companies to buy more British goods and services.

Chancellor John Healey has announced a new UK Export Finance product, Flexible Finance, aimed at providing loans to buyers in fast-growing markets such as Brazil, Morocco and Mexico, to incentivise them to purchase British products.

The chancellor is expected to reveal more details of the scheme in his speech at the Labour conference on Monday.

Mr Healey said: “We’re backing British businesses to strike more deals overseas, especially in countries which are growing fast but where we don’t have a big British footprint.

“This is a new approach and part of the argument I will make in my speech in Liverpool on Monday that we are backing British industry and British innovation, helping create more markets abroad and more jobs at home.”

He added: “The British export market is strong, making Britain the place to do business. Companies across our four nations are seizing the opportunities to sell their goods and services around the world, but there are some markets we are yet to properly capitalise on.

“This new pilot is a win-win for the companies that can continue to scale up, and for the communities in which they can inject new jobs and growth.”

Dan Haygarth27 September 2026 07:29

Burnham should still call snap election and campaign on reversing Brexit, former adviser says

Andy Burnham should reconsider calling a snap general election and make undoing Brexit the centrepiece of the campaign, a former Labour government adviser has said.

Mr Burnham tried to “knock dead” the idea of going to the polls early in interviews on the eve of the annual Labour party conference.

But Ben Judah, a special adviser to David Lammy in the Foreign Office until earlier this year, believes the prime minister could pull off an election victory to rival Boris Johnson’s in 2019 if he seized the moment on Europe.

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Dan Haygarth27 September 2026 07:26

Burnham and Healey hint at tough choices to come, as Labour conference begins

Both Andy Burnham and his chancellor have hinted at tough choices for the Government this autumn, despite the prime minister’s intent to push forward a message of hope at his first Labour conference since seizing power.

Mr Burnham acknowledged he and the chancellor John Healey face a “challenging” set of circumstances at the Budget, and said he is prepared to take tough decisions to deliver his change agenda.

Elsewhere, Mr Healey signalled he was willing to make the case to Labour backbenchers over welfare reforms, as there was a “moral duty” to ensure a generation of young people get into work.

Their room for manoeuvre at the budget has been severely constrained by rising borrowing costs, pushed up by the US-Iran war, among other global events.

Speaking to The Guardian, Mr Burnham insisted his Government could both bring forward a radical reform agenda, and maintain the public finances amid the fraught economic situation.

He suggested the public would have “more respect for us if we go and grab something difficult … and say, ‘right, we’re going to do something here’, rather than constantly playing the political game before fixing the problems”.

He added: “It’s challenging, definitely, but there are still things that you can do. Always in politics, there are things that you can do. The question is sometimes, are you prepared to do them? Yeah, I am prepared to do them.”

Speaking to The Sunday Times, Mr Healey meanwhile suggested he was ready to argue his case with Labour backbenchers opposed to welfare reform, as a means of containing the ballooning costs to the public purse.

He told the newspaper: “I first got elected nearly 30 years ago for part of Rotherham and in the 1990s, in South Yorkshire, the level of youth unemployment was one in three.

“That, for me, is a moral duty that this Government now must pick up again, with nearly a million youngsters post-Covid, before the election, not in employment, not in education, not in training.

“I refuse to see a generation in jeopardy. I refuse to see a generation condemned to a life on benefits.”

Dan Haygarth27 September 2026 07:24

Daniel Haygarth27 September 2026 07:22

Burnham arrives at Labour conference for first time as leader

Andy Burnham has arrived at the Labour annual conference for the first time as the party’s leader.

He has promised to set out “a new direction for the country”, insisting he can bring about radical change despite economic headwinds.

Ahead of the conference, he said: “We’re going to make this a really important week where we set out a new direction for the country.”

“We’ve had a decade since Brexit, and it’s been a decade of too much drift, too much division, and we need to draw a line on that.”

He said his vision would leave “people able to have hope again that things will improve, that life will get better – and it will”.