Andy Burnham

“I’m in this job for what I can do for people, not for what it can do for me … to make the changes that my dad, for instance, long pushed me to make.”

“You have to have stability, but you have to do what you can within that. You can’t pursue a major programme of change, which is what I believe the country needs, in a chaotic situation.”

“I do think it is crucial to have stability and to show that there’s a willingness to face up to the reality of some of these difficult things.

We must work calmly through the weekend.

I won’t do what the previous Tory government did and take risks with the economy that are actually still hurting us right now.

And can we honestly justify that? That politics in this country cannot face an issue like this and deal with it because we’re too scared of it?

If we continue to approach this issue with politics as usual, where people are scoring points and they’re taking a proposal and then trying to frighten the public at home about it, we will never fix it.

I’m going to rip the plaster off, if I can put it that way, because someone has to do it.

Trust is really important to me here. I don’t think you can reform this system without it, without consensus.

Today's funding will help put power back into the hands of locals who know their area best.

People don't measure growth by looking at a spreadsheet. They measure it by looking at their local high street. Are shops opening or are the shutters down? Does the place feel like it's moving forward or being left behind?

There's a consultation but there are different views and you have to take those views seriously in coming to a decision.

I think we ought to hear the voice of people there first. It's not right for me to just jump straight in on the back of the consultation.

I think principally, it's a matter for London and Londoners.

The public would have more respect for us if we go and grab something difficult… and say, 'Right, we're going to do something here', rather than constantly playing the political game before fixing the problems.

There's always things you can do; it's just whether you're prepared to do them.

We've had a decade since Brexit and it's been a decade of too much drift, too much division, and we need to draw a line on that.

Too many young people are struggling with the cost of housing, with many giving up hope of ever having a home to call their own.

I don't think you can reform this system without consensus. I will develop a very clear plan and I will put that plan to the public at a general election and that will be where the plan gets tested and people will then be able to decide.

It will be a system of that kind – so everyone contributes, everyone is covered but not precisely necessarily in the same way that we currently pay for the NHS.

I am talking about a system that works on NHS principles because that is the only way you can make it work.

That’s not the British way, as far as I’m concerned.

I do, because it’s designed to intimidate, and create a feeling on British streets of the kind that we don’t accept.

I’m not going to give you a date by which we can do that, or a promise that we will do it, as other governments have done in terms of a particular deadline.

I do point to the loss of collaboration with neighbours that came with Brexit. That hasn’t helped.