Andy Burnham: “I think we do allow people to suffer and families to suffer too much.”

My message to young people is this - whether you choose construction, coding or classics, or maths, manufacturing or mechanics, you'll get the skills you need and be given the respect you deserve.

Politics has become too suffocating. We need greater ambition. The country is not where it should be and nothing simple gets us out of that. We need to show a journey and a longer-term plan.

So I can confirm today we will legislate to make sure that non-compete clauses will no longer be a barrier to hiring for our most promising start-ups and scaling firms.

In a fundamental change to the education system, we will introduce new technical education pathways from 14 – prestigious routes that will give students the chance to combine the core academic subjects with the skills, technical knowledge…