Andy Burnham has promised to set out plans for “stronger public control” of essential services as he addressed the House of Commons for the first time since taking power.
The prime minister said “a series of wrong turns” since the 1980s had seen economic power in the UK privatised and pointed to the water industry as “a leaking monument to that approach – a country run in the private rather than public interest”.
He reiterated his belief that political power had been centralised and announced he would be making devolution powers available to more areas in England.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused Burnham of offering “more government control, more taxes and more politicians”.
“His diagnosis is completely wrong, his theory of growth is completely wrong, he thinks that if government spends more money, we will all get richer – that is not how this works,” she said.
Badenoch also warned the prime minister that his new job would be “very different” to his previous Greater Manchester mayoral role where he “did not have to make difficult trade-offs”.
Burnham became prime minister on 20 July shortly after Parliament closed for the summer recess.
Tuesday marked the first day of the new parliamentary session and provided his first opportunity to address MPs and take questions.
He told the House of Commons that “Britain is not where we would wish it to be”, but promised to “build a new sense of optimism around the country”.
Following his 10 years away from Parliament, Burnham said he was returning with a “clear diagnosis” of what had gone wrong in the country.
“From the 1980s, this country took a series of wrong turns,” he said.
“Political power was centralised, economic power privatised, the country deindustrialised, austerity followed, hollowing out councils and depriving them of the agency to act to reverse any of this.
“And then Brexit compounded the damage, ushering in a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration.”
In the months before becoming prime minister, Burnham stopped short of calling for full nationalisation but said he wanted to see greater public control of water and energy.
On Tuesday, he promised that a plan to achieve this would be produced “later in the year”.
Pressed on his plans for the water sector by Conservative MP Alison Griffiths, Burnham said it was important to “look at all possible solutions”.
“It’s a very regrettable situation that the privatisation of water has left us in a position where we’re going to find it very difficult to reverse,” he added.
