Andy Burnham's first week pledges – how much do they add up to?

By Ben Chu , BBC Verify  and  Tom Edgington , BBC Verify Published 5 minutes ago Andy Burnham is ending his first week as prime minister by working out of Manchester in the new No 10 North for the first time. He spent this week making a series of spending announcements mostly aimed at tackling the cost of living, including capping bus fares. BBC Verify has looked at Burnham's first week of spending commitments, how much they cost and how the government says they will be paid for, which comes to about £1.5bn. Here's how that breaks down and what could later be coming down the line. End rough sleeping in England Cost: £340m over five years, funded In his speech outside Downing Street , external on Monday, Burnham said his "first instruction" would be "to end rough sleeping in our country". The most recent official data , external suggests that there were around 4,800 people sleeping rough on a single night in England in 2025, up from 1,800 in 2010. The government announced that Burnham's "instruction" would be delivered by £340m of spending, which it said would support at least 3,000 people over a five year period. It said this money would come from existing "uncommitted" budgets in the housing department. This means that the funding has been made available by the Treasury to the department but had not yet been assigned to a specific project. VAT cut from electricity bills Cost: £850m, unfunded On Tuesday morning the Treasury announced that it would cut , external VAT from domestic electricity bills in the current financial year, knocking an estimated £45 from the typical household's annual bill from the autumn. It said this would cost £850m in 2026-27 - to be funded by scrapping the previous government's digital ID scheme, which had been estimated to cost £1.8bn over the next three years. However, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the official spending watchdog, made clear in the last budget that the digital ID scheme was itself "unfunded" , external at that stage. That implies that while scrapping the digital ID scheme will reduce a spending pressure on the government it will not, in itself, pay for the VAT cut. That tax cut will have to be funded in the next budget, either by tax rises or specific spending cuts elsewhere. Five headaches Andy Burnham will have to deal with as PM Published 7 days ago Three reasons why UK electricity prices are so high Published 2 days ago Can Andy Burnham solve the housing crisis? Published 16 July £2 cap on bus fares Cost: £500m, funded On Wednesday, the government announced it would reduce the cap on bus fares , external in England from £3 to £2 from 1 January 2027, though this does not include London. It estimated this cap would cost the Department for Transport more than £500m. It said most of this would be found by replacing grants for international climate projects with loans. This would save the government money because the loans would be expected to be paid back in full, plus interest,