Great British Grid Still Uses Great British Energy's Budget

This week, I announced Great British Grid, which will speed up connections and push down bills.

Source: https://x.com/andyburnham/status/2106335675083538860

Great British Grid will speed up connections and push down bills. That is the claim. The cash still comes from Great British Energy's existing budget. Full details of the new body are yet to be set out.

The Prime Minister posted this on Saturday 3 October 2026. The line recaps his first Labour conference speech as party leader, in Liverpool, on Tuesday 29 September. The verbs are large. Announced. Speed up. Push down. It reads like a new company that already shortens the queue and cuts the bill.

It does not. Alex Forsyth, Paul Seddon and Jennifer McKiernan filed the speech for the BBC on 29 September. They say he told activists that a publicly owned company, branded Great British Grid, will speed up connections to the grid by driving up competition for connection projects. He put that at the heart of a 10-year goal: bring UK energy costs in line with other nations in Europe.

"A publicly-owned company that will challenge the private sector operators," he told the hall. "It will increase competition, drive down costs and speed up connections. So businesses can expand and grow more quickly." Challenge is a verb. A challenger is not the owner of the wires.

The BBC says full details of the new body are yet to be set out. Labour said it would invest in and compete for transmission connection projects alongside the three private companies that currently own and manage the grid in Britain. Alongside is the key word. The three stay. The new badge bids next to them.

The party also said it would make it easier for firms waiting to be connected to the grid to finance connection infrastructure themselves, with GB Grid supporting and potentially co-investing in projects alongside them. Supporting. Potentially. Co-investing. Those are offers to sit in on a build. They are not a promise that the wait is over this week.

Labour has said that funding for the new body will be found within the existing budget of GB Energy, the public green investment company set up by Labour last year and now headquartered in Aberdeen. A new name on an old budget is not a new pile of cash. Speed up and push down are claims about the bill. The purse is the one already on the books.

The size of the job sits next to that purse. Energy regulator Ofgem has estimated that £70bn of investment is required in the grid between 2025 and 2031, quadrupling the current rate. In a report earlier this month, the National Audit Office warned that the number of projects waiting to connect to the grid had grown "significantly" whilst delays to projects were also increasing. A longer queue is the fact. A Saturday tweet is the slogan.

Dhara Vyas, chief executive of Energy UK, told the BBC the investment was welcome, but "the bulk of this will be private investment." In the next five years, she said, the transmission owners are spending £90bn. £90bn from the firms that already own the wires. GB Grid's cash is inside GB Energy's existing budget. Those two sums are not the same size.

The BBC notes there are a number of reasons for high energy prices in the UK, part of which comes from state subsidies given to private companies to modernise the grid. That cost ends up on customer bills. A public challenger that spends from an existing budget, next to three private owners, does not by itself take that add-on off the bill.

Conservative shadow energy secretary Andrew Bowie said the Prime Minister wanted to "nationalise the network." The BBC copy does not say the three private companies are being bought. It says the new body will compete alongside them. Nationalise is a charge. Alongside is the design as filed.

Matthew Lawrence, founder of the think tank Common Wealth and a former adviser to the Prime Minister, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Tuesday's announcement "seems to have fixed that by bringing in public investment into new parts of the grid." Seems to have fixed that is a verdict on a speech. The audit office report is a verdict on the queue. They do not tell the same time.

In the same speech he said the UK will have a national energy plan for the first time and give stronger powers to mayors and local leaders. "Energy, water, housing. Back under stronger public control." Stronger control is a slogan. GB Grid, as filed, is a public bidder using GB Energy's existing budget, with full details yet to be set out.

Compare the two clocks. The slogan clock says speed up connections and push down bills. The diary clock says a 10-year goal, a body whose full details are not set out, cash found inside GB Energy, and three private owners still on the wires. Ofgem's clock is £70bn from 2025 to 2031. Energy UK's clock is £90bn of private spend in five years.

None of this says the wait to connect is short, or that UK bills are low. The point is the size of the claim next to the size of the purse. "Speed up" is a verdict. "Push down" is a verdict. An existing GB Energy budget is money already assigned. Full details yet to be set out is a gap.

The pattern is a new grid badge sold as faster connections and lower bills, while the cash is GB Energy's old budget and the wires stay with the three private owners.

A company announced this week is not a shorter wait this week. The name is new. The budget is not.

Sources: Andy Burnham on X, 3 October 2026 + BBC News, 29 September 2026

The Burnham Report — counter-commentary on what the Prime Minister says. Quotes are verbatim. Every claim is checked against a second source before publication.