From defence uplift to national care service, Andy Burnham faces question of funding

Andy Burnham plans to accelerate the timetable for rolling out a national care service. Photograph: Eddie Mulholland/Reuters View image in fullscreen Andy Burnham plans to accelerate the timetable for rolling out a national care service. Photograph: Eddie Mulholland/Reuters From defence uplift to national care service, Andy Burnham faces question of funding As new prime minister briefs cabinet on ‘cost of living government’, critics ask where money will come from UK politics live – latest updates Andy Burnham is under mounting pressure to explain how he will pay for his policy pledges as he implored his new cabinet to examine “all possible ways” to tackle the cost of living crisis. On his first full day in power, the prime minister faced questions about how he would fund the removal of VAT from electricity bills and also an expected uplift in defence spending – an issue that led his new chancellor, John Healey, to resign as Keir Starmer’s defence secretary last month. The Guardian has also learned Burnham plans to accelerate the timetable for implementing his promise to roll out a national care service, a move that could cost further money before the election. Gathering his cabinet in Downing Street for the first time, the prime minister told ministers his would be a “cost of living government”, adding that his priority would be to make life cheaper for voters – albeit within existing borrowing rules. “What can we do just to take that little bit of pressure off people’s shoulders, just to give them that little extra sense that help is coming so that they can have that bit of hope that things are getting better?” he asked colleagues. “And that’s the mission that we’ve got to set ourselves together.” He asked his colleagues to look into what their department could do to ease cost of living pressures, both “big and small”. “We need to be a cost of living government, getting that cost of living down, looking at all possible ways of doing that.” Burnham began that process on Tuesday morning with an announcement that VAT would be removed from electricity bills from 1 October, reducing the electricity price cap by £45 at a total cost of £850m next year. The move came alongside major changes to Whitehall, which will see the creation of a new powerful Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet and hand responsibility for the UK’s growth strategy to the new No 10 North, which will be overseen by Louise Haigh, Burnham’s de facto deputy prime minister. View image in fullscreen Darren Jones, who was in charge of the now scrapped ID policy, said money for that scheme had not yet been identified. Photograph: Thomas Krych/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock Burnham’s promise to pay for the VAT cut by scrapping the government’s digital ID scheme was immediately called into question, however, by Darren Jones, the minister in charge of the policy until recently, who said the money for that scheme had not yet been identified. “The DigitalID program was unfunded,” he pos