Kemi urges Andy Burnham to cut benefits, rule out more tax rises and get drilling!

By JASON GROVES, POLITICAL EDITOR Published: 02:40, 20 July 2026 | Updated: 02:42, 20 July 2026 Kemi Badenoch has urged Andy Burnham to rule out further tax rises and focus on cutting the benefits bill when he takes power today. In a letter to the incoming Prime Minister, the Tory leader warned Britain risks becoming 'a welfare state with a country attached' unless he gets a grip on the bloated benefits system. Mr Burnham has called for an end to political 'point scoring' and suggested he is willing to work with opposition parties on some issues. Mrs Badenoch last night offered to co-operate on bringing the welfare system under control. But she warned she will 'never shirk' from holding him to account. Mrs Badenoch told the recently elected MP for Makerfield: 'You will enter office without having set out a clear plan on any of the issues facing our country. 'You have refused calls to come to Parliament for questions from MPs, and you have not submitted yourself to serious media scrutiny. This is not a promising start.' Mrs Badenoch said she was 'disappointed' with signals from Mr Burnham that he is planning to push Britain's record tax burden even higher. The new Labour leader has already hinted he will ask people to pay 'a little more' in tax, although he has so far failed to say what this will mean in practice. Kemi Badenoch last night offered to co-operate on bringing the welfare system under control Mr Burnham has suggested he is willing to work with opposition parties on some issues Mr Burnham is said to be looking at plans to increase capital gains tax. He has long favoured replacing council tax and stamp duty with a new 'land value tax' which would punish middle-class families in the South. And he has signalled he is planning a new 'death tax' to fund social care. Mrs Badenoch urged him to 'rule out any new tax rises now'. The Leader of the Opposition said the new PM's vague plans risk condemning Britain to another 'damaging summer of speculation, affecting business investment, home owners and family finances'. She also said he should set out exactly how he will pay for an eye-catching blitz of new policies he is planning to unveil this week, including cuts to energy bills and effective nationalisation of troubled utility Thames Water. 'Given taxes are already too high, and we are already borrowing far too much, you must commit to making spending cuts and to addressing our debt burden,' she wrote. Mrs Badenoch, however, welcomed signals that Mr Burnham plans to loosen Ed Miliband's grip on the Net Zero agenda, describing him as a 'one-man deindustrialisation machine'. But she said that he must go further than simply approving licences for the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields in the North Sea. 'You should overturn the destructive ban on new oil and gas licences, which amounts to unilateral energy disarmament,' she said. In a series of media interviews yesterday, Mrs Badenoch dismissed the 'airy-fairy' nature of Mr Burnham's announcements in the run up to his 'coronation' as Prime Minister, describing him as a 'people pleaser' who would give in to Left-wing Labour backbenchers. The Tory leader also defended the record of Margaret Thatcher, whom Mr Burnham said had made a number of 'wrong turns' in the 1980s. She said Mrs Thatcher's 'genius' had rebuilt Britain after the decline of the 1970s, adding that she 'unlocked enterprise, ownership and personal responsibility, using less regulation and lower taxes'.