ANDY BURNHAM insisted today that the government’s focus must be on solving the housing and cost-of-living crises through “lower rents, lower water bills, lower energy bills, lower rail fares, lower bus fares.”

The Greater Manchester mayor made the comments at a Resolution Foundation event where he identified housing as the most critical issue, calling it “fundamental” for “unsung Britain.”

“You can’t have anything in life without a good, secure home … It shouldn’t be a luxury.

“It should be a human right enshrined in UK law,” he said, proposing three specific measures.

He called for a new government target to build “half a million council and social homes by the end of this decade” and advocated giving councils powers and funding to purchase substandard homes from the private rented sector.

“We wouldn’t allow a food product … to harm the health of people, but we somehow allow homes to be rented out that harm the health of our residents,” he said.

Mr Burnham also called for the acceleration of a national retrofit programme to provide better homes with “permanently lower energy bills.”

While Mr Burnham began his speech by thanking the Foundation for “refocusing the British political debate on people who most need politics to work for them,” he concluded by saying the focus “should be on the by-election” in Gorton and Denton, which he said is “winnable for Labour.”

Mr Burnham was blocked from standing in the election by Labour Party’s national executive committee.

He hailed the benefits of public control, adding: “I believe it’s what we should be working towards together with the government and also bring pace and focus to lowering the cost of other life’s essentials.

“To do that requires stability, and I make my own call for that today across the Labour Party.

“Of course stability comes from greater unity and that would be helped by a more inclusive way of running the party but recent events make that now feel possible.”

In the Q&A portion of the event, Mr Burnham declared his support for Sir Keir Starmer and said he had spoken to the Prime Minister about the party needing a “strong sense of a stronger team again.”

The party’s leadership has been squeezed by recent scandals over their knowledge of relationships of figures with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and dropping poll results.