Kevin Hollinrake interview: Andy Burnham 'kicking can down the road'

The Thirsk and Malton MP spoke to The Yorkshire Post ahead of the Conservative Party Conference this weekend.

Conservative Party Chair Kevin Hollinrake has accused Andy Burnham of “kicking the can down the road” with Britain’s problems.

The Prime Minister made major announcements on the triple lock, social care, electoral reform and Brexit in his Labour Party Conference speech, all which will have to wait until after the next election.

Speaking to The Yorkshire Post ahead of the Conservatives’ own conference starting tomorrow in Birmingham, Mr Hollinrake, the Thirsk and Malton MP, said “hope is not a strategy”.

“I won’t take away from the way he presented his speech, he’s a good communicator and a likeable guy,” Mr Hollinrake said.

“You can’t just float these things that you might do in a Parliament down the track, the next Parliament, all which have prices to pay for them.”

Mr Burnham said that he would use savings from a change to the pensions triple lock to fund a free at the point of use home social care service.

He said he would start a commission on electoral reform and seek to find a consensus around relations with the European Union, which could include rejoining the bloc.

All of these, he said, would eventually be put on the Labour manifesto at the next election.

“What about this Parliament, what about now?” Mr Hollinrake said.

“You’ve got record-high fuel prices, you’ve got energy prices about to go higher yet again.

“You’ve got an economic malaise in this country in terms of slow growth.

“You’ve got rising unemployment, very high youth unemployment, business confidence at an all time low.

“What about now? What are you going to do to kickstart this economy and deal with things like the small boats.

“People want to know what is happening now, and there was precious little about that.”

Mr Hollinrake made it clear that he expected the pensions triple lock to be part of the next Conservative manifesto, and focused on attacking Mr Burnham over the size of the welfare budget.

It appears clear that this is going to be the Tory attack line going forward.

“You have got to get the economy growing again, part of that is literally getting millions of people back to work,” Mr Hollinrake said.

“Getting those people back into work, of course you need support to do that but you’ve also got to take away the incentive which is cash payments.

“That gets people into the economy working again which will push the economy forward.

“Given Keir Starmer’s problems with this, in terms of reforming welfare, and the costs of managing the welfare system, I think he’s going to face big trouble in terms of delivering that, which is probably why he didn’t touch on that.”

The Tory chair, who is a close ally of leader Kemi Badenoch, indicated that there are likely to be announcements about tax cuts at the Conservative conference in Birmingham.

“You remember running into the 2024 election Labour produced no plans about what they were going to do,” he said.

“We have done the hard work of setting out our plan.

“Kemi has been clear, she is not just cutting taxes, she is scrapping taxes - things like stamp duty and things like business rates - that is the right thing to do.

“There will be more of that at the conference, we’ll have some exciting new announcements.

“That’s her philosophy - low tax, low regulation and set the forces of the entrepreneurial economy free.”

Meanwhile, Mr Badenoch confirmed the Conservatives are getting ready for an early general election, which she says she believes Mr Burnham is planning to call, and insisted they offered the “only credible alternative” to Labour.

She said: “The Conservative Party is different. We have changed. We have new policies, new plans, new people coming on board.

“We’ve learned from the mistakes of the past, but we are also very different from Labour, who are offering a destructive socialist agenda that will bankrupt our economy.

“And we’re very, very different from Reform, who actually, when you look at the problems they have had recently, whether it’s their leader in Wales in prison, the one after him being arrested, not having any formed policies on anything outside of cryptocurrency, I think this shows that there’s only one credible alternative to Labour, and that’s what I hope the public will be seeing.”

Recent polling has placed Labour ahead of both the Conservatives and Reform UK, although a YouGov MRP survey last week projected a hung parliament with the Tories leapfrogging Reform to second place.

Asked if she could give a cast-iron guarantee there would be no Tory-Reform pact, Mrs Badenoch said: “Yes, I’ve always said it so many times, nothing has changed since the last time I gave that guarantee.

“They are not our kind of people, and actually, those those who say doing a deal is what we should do forget that many people who would vote for us would not vote for us if we were in some kind of pact or deal with Reform.”