Burnham says days of criminal gangs making money from dumping waste are ‘over’
Hello and welcome to the UK politics live blog.
The days of criminal gangs making easy money from dumping waste are “over”, the prime minister will say on a visit to a waste site in Yorkshire later today.
Illegal dumps in West Yorkshire, Surrey and Kent will be cleared up using taxpayer money, Andy Burnham has announced, as he promised a new drive to tackle toxic waste.
Ministers have identified dumps in Bradford, Runnymede and the Isle of Sheppey, which collectively contain about 22,000 tonnes of illegal waste, to be cleared in the next phase of the government’s national clear-up effort.
Meanwhile, fines will be raised for rogue dumpers, and AI-powered drones will be used to detect illegal activity while it happens, as the government looks to prioritise prevention alongside clean-up efforts.
Burnham said in a statement:
These toxic dumps have blighted communities for too long. I said we would clean them up – and that’s exactly what we’re announcing today.
He added:
These mountains of rubbish have been a clear sign to communities that politics hasn’t been working for them or their area.
This government is going to tackle the issues that have been ignored by Westminster for too long and bring back hope.
Hundreds of illegal waste sites have been reported across England, with a BBC investigation recently uncovering 11 “supersites” that contain more than 20,000 tonnes of rubbish.
One of the country’s most notorious sites is in Burnham’s own constituency of Makerfield, where a rotting, rat-infested mountain of waste has remained for more than 20 months. The site was identified for clean-up in March alongside two others, but locals say they have seen little improvement in the site since then.
During the byelection campaign, which Burnham won earlier this year, voters in the area told the Guardian they would vote for him specifically to get rid of that one site.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
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Andy Burnham has said government money alone may not be enough to get rough sleepers off the streets by Christmas, as he issued a “rallying call” for councils, charities and communities to help solve the problem. Speaking on a visit to the north-east of England, he said he felt “very passionately” about tackling homelessness and wanted the wider society to play a part in wiping it out.
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Burnham is “too chicken” to approve the controversial Jackdaw and Rosebank oil and gasfields, the Tories have claimed. Production had been approved by the previous Conservative government, but those decisions were quashed after a legal challenge by Greenpeace, leaving Labour ministers to decide whether drilling should go ahead.
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Labour could lose dozens of seats to the Green party if the government allows new drilling in the North Sea, according to internal research shared with the Guardian. Green party analysis suggests up to 50 Labour MPs – including key Andy Burnham ally Louise Haigh – could lose their seats at the next election if the government fails to make urgent climate action a priority or allows new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.
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The Tories believe they can cut energy bills by £540 a year for the next two decades by prioritising cheap energy over net zero. Speaking in London, the shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho said, when she was a minister, civil servants had been unable to prove to her that wind and solar energy was cheaper than fossil fuels.
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Burnham has warned of the dangers of open-water swimming as he called the deaths of a mother, father and their teenage daughter who got into difficulty in water off Sussex “a terrible family tragedy”. The prime minister expressed his sympathies as a young girl from the same family remained in a critical condition in hospital.
Key events
Aletha Adu
Andy Burnham has floated a number of policies, ideas and ambitions for his government since becoming prime minister, from shifting power out of Westminster, bringing services under public control and addressing the rising cost of living.
But many of his promises are not actually firm commitments, so what has he pledged, how much will it cost and when should the public expect change?
Farage using Christianity ‘to stir anti-Muslim feeling’, says Rowan Williams
Caroline Davies
A former archbishop of Canterbury has accused Nigel Farage of misusing the UK’s Christianity “to channel anti-Muslim feeling” and said he also had “some awkward questions” for the far-right activist Tommy Robinson.
Dr Rowan Williams, who was the archbishop of Canterbury for 10 years until 2012, said there was an “inevitable scepticism these days about some claims to religious conviction”.
Speaking to the New Humanist magazine, Williams said: “I suspect really that Farage and others want to channel anti-Muslim feeling, and it helps to have ‘we’re a Christian society’ to fling back. It gives a sort of ballast.”
Asked what he believed was driving Christian nationalism in the UK, Williams said:
There are lots of possible causes. Anxiety about migration, anti-Islamism. In France, that anxiety has a secular aspect, but the St George’s Cross still means something in the English imagination, which still has a Christian aspect.
The second thing is the globalising of all political discourse. The message given at international Christian conservative gatherings is that self-respecting nationalist movements need a bit of theology injected into them.
Ironically, for someone like Nigel Farage, it’s about trying to find a presentational strategy that allows him to be taken seriously outside England. He’s often not here, after all.
Then again, if we’re looking for what animates Christian nationalism, I think it’s in part the very simple search for someone to blame.
Working in Keir Starmer’s No 10 ‘unbearable’, says Sue Gray
Rowena Mason
Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff has lifted the lid on how “unbearable” it was working in No 10, revealing she feared her conversations were being recorded by colleagues seeking to leak her remarks to the media.
Sue Gray, who was the most powerful adviser in Downing Street before her resignation in 2024, was highly critical of the working environment under Starmer, saying she was “disappointed” that he did not act on her concerns about staff briefing journalists against her.
In an interview with the Political Currency podcast, shared with the Guardian, she gave her first major analysis of the extreme tensions in the early days of Starmer’s operation, providing an insight into the culture of what has been called a “boys’ club” operating with Downing Street.
In the weeks before Gray quit, Starmer was accused of having lost control of his senior team after a series of acrimonious leaks to the media about his chief of staff’s pay being higher than that of the prime minister and her apparently difficult relationships with senior colleagues.
Almost one in four boys in England received top grades in maths while results in English improved across the board, helping to propel improved GCSE results for this year’s cohort of 16-year-olds.
The stronger performances in maths helped pupils taking GCSEs in year 11 reach a record level for higher grades in England outside the Covid pandemic years, when exams were replaced by teacher assessments.
The overall results for 16-year-olds nudged slightly higher compared with last year, with the proportion receiving grades 7, 8 and 9 – equivalent to grades A and A* – rising by 0.1 of a percentage point to 23.1%. The proportion of nearly 700,000 16-year-olds in England who got a grade 4 or better – equivalent to a C or higher – also rose to 70.7%, compared with 70.5% in 2025.
Some of the strongest performances appeared to come in the compulsory subject of maths, where 22.3% received 7s or better, including 24% of boys and 20.5% of girls. But girls did worse than last year in lower grades, dropping from 71% awarded 4 and above to 70.7%, while boys improved further to 72.8%.
My colleague Taz Ali has all the latest news and reaction on results day in our GCSE results blog here:
Burnham says days of criminal gangs making money from dumping waste are ‘over’
Hello and welcome to the UK politics live blog.
The days of criminal gangs making easy money from dumping waste are “over”, the prime minister will say on a visit to a waste site in Yorkshire later today.
Illegal dumps in West Yorkshire, Surrey and Kent will be cleared up using taxpayer money, Andy Burnham has announced, as he promised a new drive to tackle toxic waste.
Ministers have identified dumps in Bradford, Runnymede and the Isle of Sheppey, which collectively contain about 22,000 tonnes of illegal waste, to be cleared in the next phase of the government’s national clear-up effort.
Meanwhile, fines will be raised for rogue dumpers, and AI-powered drones will be used to detect illegal activity while it happens, as the government looks to prioritise prevention alongside clean-up efforts.
Burnham said in a statement:
These toxic dumps have blighted communities for too long. I said we would clean them up – and that’s exactly what we’re announcing today.
He added:
These mountains of rubbish have been a clear sign to communities that politics hasn’t been working for them or their area.
This government is going to tackle the issues that have been ignored by Westminster for too long and bring back hope.
Hundreds of illegal waste sites have been reported across England, with a BBC investigation recently uncovering 11 “supersites” that contain more than 20,000 tonnes of rubbish.
One of the country’s most notorious sites is in Burnham’s own constituency of Makerfield, where a rotting, rat-infested mountain of waste has remained for more than 20 months. The site was identified for clean-up in March alongside two others, but locals say they have seen little improvement in the site since then.
During the byelection campaign, which Burnham won earlier this year, voters in the area told the Guardian they would vote for him specifically to get rid of that one site.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
-
Andy Burnham has said government money alone may not be enough to get rough sleepers off the streets by Christmas, as he issued a “rallying call” for councils, charities and communities to help solve the problem. Speaking on a visit to the north-east of England, he said he felt “very passionately” about tackling homelessness and wanted the wider society to play a part in wiping it out.
-
Burnham is “too chicken” to approve the controversial Jackdaw and Rosebank oil and gasfields, the Tories have claimed. Production had been approved by the previous Conservative government, but those decisions were quashed after a legal challenge by Greenpeace, leaving Labour ministers to decide whether drilling should go ahead.
-
Labour could lose dozens of seats to the Green party if the government allows new drilling in the North Sea, according to internal research shared with the Guardian. Green party analysis suggests up to 50 Labour MPs – including key Andy Burnham ally Louise Haigh – could lose their seats at the next election if the government fails to make urgent climate action a priority or allows new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.
-
The Tories believe they can cut energy bills by £540 a year for the next two decades by prioritising cheap energy over net zero. Speaking in London, the shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho said, when she was a minister, civil servants had been unable to prove to her that wind and solar energy was cheaper than fossil fuels.
-
Burnham has warned of the dangers of open-water swimming as he called the deaths of a mother, father and their teenage daughter who got into difficulty in water off Sussex “a terrible family tragedy”. The prime minister expressed his sympathies as a young girl from the same family remained in a critical condition in hospital.
