page_title: Andy Burnham
section_title: Brown Cabinet (2008–2010)
hierarchical_section_title: Andy Burnham / Member of Parliament / In Government (2005–2010) / Brown Cabinet (2008–2010)
caption_attribution_description: English: Andrew Burnham, British politician and Secretary of State for Health, speaking during the Health Hotel reception at the Hilton Metropole, Brighton, during the Labour Party Conference 2009.
context_page_description: Andrew Murray Burnham is a British Labour Party politician who has served as Mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017. He attended Gordon Brown’s Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2007 to 2008 and served in the Cabinet as Culture Secretary from 2008 to 2009 and Health Secretary from 2009 to 2010. Burnham served as Member of Parliament for Leigh from 2001 to 2017.
  Born in the Old Roan area of Aintree, Lancashire, Burnham was educated at comprehensive schools and graduated with a degree in English from Fitzwilliam College at the University of Cambridge. He worked as a researcher for Tessa Jowell from 1994 to 1997, then worked for the NHS Confederation in 1997 and as an administrator for the Football Task Force in 1998. The same year, he became a special adviser to Culture Secretary Chris Smith, a position he held until 2001. After the retirement of Lawrence Cunliffe, the Labour MP for Leigh, Burnham was elected to succeed him in 2001.
  He was a member of the Health Select Committee from 2001 until 2003, then serving as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Home Secretary David Blunkett until 2004, when he became PPS to Education Secretary Ruth Kelly.
context_section_description: In a re-shuffle in January 2008, Burnham was promoted to the position of Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, replacing James Purnell. In June 2008, he apologised to the director of pressure group Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, after she threatened to sue him for libel for smearing her reputation.
  In late 2008, Burnham announced government plans to tighten controls on internet content in order to "even up" what he described as an imbalance with TV regulations. The announcement was followed by a speech to the music industry's lobbying group, UK Music, in which he announced "a time that calls for partnership between Government and the music business as a whole: one with rewards for both of us; one with rewards for society as a whole. (...) My job – Government's job – is to preserve the value in the system."
  In April 2009 after being heckled at the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster Burnham used the next day's cabinet meeting in Downing Street to ask then prime minister Gordon Brown if he could raise the issue of Hillsborough in Parliament. Brown agreed despite it not being on the agenda or on the government's radar. The eventual result was the second Hillsborough inquiry. In 2014 when Burnham spoke at the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster he was cheered and applauded by the crowd.
  Burnham was again promoted becoming Secretary of State for Health in June 2009. He held the post until the Labour government resigned after the 2010 general election. In July 2009, a month after he became health secretary, Burnham launched an independent inquiry chaired by the QC Robert Francis into unusually high mortality rates at Stafford Hospital. The inquiry found systematic failures at the hospital, and was critical of care provided by the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. A wider public inquiry, also led by Robert Francis, was launched in 2010 by his successor as health secretary, Andrew Lansley. It found serious failings at the hospital but concluded it would be "misleading" to link those failings to a particular number of deaths. After leaving office, reports claimed that Burnham and his predecessor as health secretary, Alan Johnson, had rejected 81 requests for an inquiry sitting in public to examine the high rate of deaths at Stafford hospital. According to The Daily Telegraph, after initial concerns were raised about links between mortality rates and standards of care in 2005, there were up to 2,800 more deaths than expected across 14 NHS trusts highlighted as having unusually high death rates. These figures for deaths were however discredited. A report, the Keogh Review, following an investigation into the 14 NHS trusts by Bruce Keogh, described the use of such statistical measures as "clinically meaningless and academically reckless".
caption: Burnham as Health Secretary, speaking at an event during the Labour Party conference in 2009
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