Andy Burnham pledges excessive road crackdown with blitz on dodgy retailers blighting city centres

EXCLUSIVE: The Greater Manchester Mayor demanded greater powers for councils to block the spread of vape shops, as well as a fresh police crackdown on dodgy shops

Andy Burnham has said it’s time to get serious on fixing Britain’s high streets with a blitz on dodgy shops blighting town centres.

The Greater Manchester Mayor demanded greater powers for councils to block the spread of vape shops, as well as a police crackdown on shady outlets like barbers and sweet shops acting as fronts for organised crime.

He also pledged to push for legal powers to seize illegal e-bikes causing misery for residents if he is elected in the upcoming Makerfield by-election.

Mr Burnham is battling to win the make-or-break contest on June 18, which would offer him a path back to Westminster, where he is widely expected to challenge Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership.

While he remains tight-lipped on his plans after polling day, he has made a number of interventions on national policy – seen as a blueprint for a leadership bid.

Speaking to the Mirror on the campaign trail, Mr Burnham said getting high streets thriving were at the heart of his plans – and pledged to go further than the Government, which has already set up a new specialist unit to target dodgy outfits accused of laundering money.

“We need to get much more serious about improving high streets and listen to what people are saying,” he said.

Describing his plans, he said: “Changing the planning designation of vape shops – which in Greater Manchester we’ve seen linked to other forms of criminality – and giving councils more ability to prevent the spread, because at the moment there’s nothing they can do if a vape shop moves into an office or a cafe where it’s been vacated, the council can’t stop it.

“So it’s about giving more control over the high street. I’m a very big critic of adult gaming centres, you can see they’re open 24/7 and all the social harms that come from that. Again, councils need stronger control to stop the spread of those things.”

Mr Burnham wants to roll out a policing blitz, modelled on Greater Manchester Police’s Operation Vulcan, which included targeted raids on hotspot areas for dodgy shops.

Mr Burnham has already said he would like to cut business rates for pubs, clubs and music venues by 20% next year, funded through higher levies on massive warehouses for giants like Amazon.

He said: “The world has changed, we don’t need as much retail space anymore. It’s about rethinking towns, and particularly building modern living accommodation in the heart of towns, so that you create new footfall for an economy that runs into the evening.”

The Greater Manchester Mayor said cash-strapped local councils needed more funding, after being cut to the bone by Tory austerity.

He said: “Councils were just hollowed out, and I think the consequences of that can really be felt now up and down the country, and on high streets, where there just isn’t the ability to improve places, to fill potholes, to mow the parks.

“It was a really wrong thing to just leave local government threadbare.”

Asked if local authorities needed more cash, he said: “They definitely do. And some of it should come from a bloated national state, where you’ve got arms length bodies and all kinds of spending going on at that national level.

“You’ve got national government in some ways over-provided for and local government in a really, really desperate, desperate position.”

Labour’s warring factions have laid down their arms for the by-election campaign but the fight for control of the party is being played out in plain sight.

The Prime Minister has told allies he would fight any challenge, and he won’t walk away from the mandate he won less than two years ago.

Mr Burnham told Question Time last week that he would enter a race if it was triggered by rival Wes Streeting, who has made it clear he wants a tilt at the top job.

Mr Burnham refused to be drawn on a future leadership contest but said it was “dangerous” for politics in this country to remain as it is.

“I am very, very focused on the 18th of June [polling day] and not making assumptions beyond that, other than to say I will take the fight for the changes I want to see in politics as far as I can take it,” he said.

“I do think politics in this country needs fundamental change, not cosmetic change, fundamental change. It isn’t working. It isn’t working for places like this, and it’s actually dangerous just to leave it where it is and just think, ‘oh well, we’ll just carry on as we are’. Well, we can’t.”

He said it was right to thrash out ideas for the party’s direction but warned Labour must not turn in itself.

He said: “It’s about how do you take what people are saying, and turn it into a unifying agenda for the country, because the country does need to unify. It needs to come back together.

“It needs to start focusing on fixing things, rather than the difficult decade we’ve had since Brexit.”

Mr Burnham also said he would never try to mimic Reform on immigration as he said more safe routes for asylum seekers should be explored.

The Greater Manchester Mayor said the right thing to do was to “get a grip” on illegal migration, saying people needed to be able to trust the system works fairly. But he pointed to reductions in net migration and small boat crossing as signs of progress by the Government.

Keir Starmer’s Government has faced criticism over hard line immigration reforms as it faces the toxic challenge of overhauling the broken asylum system. Mr Burnham has rowed in behind Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and on Monday said that the Government needed to make greater use of immigration detention centres.

Asked about criticism Labour was trying to out-Reform Reform, he said: “I see myself sitting in the same place that I sat when I was an immigration minister in the Blair government, which is the importance of getting a grip and running the system properly according to the rules. That was very much what we did back then, and that remains my view.

“If you have a sense that system isn’t under control and that people can bypass the rules then it corrodes public confidence. I would never be in the business of trying to mimic another party, I’m just clear about what the right thing to do is. The right thing to do is get a grip on it.”

He credited the Home Secretary with making progress driving down small boat crossings, but added: “We need to build on that and go further. Going further actually might mean more use of safe routes. I would be quite open about that.

“The point being, you just re-establish control, and that is what I think I’ve heard on hundreds of doorsteps in this campaign. I want to assure people I’ve heard it, I will act on it.”