Burnham cancels engagements after death of father

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has cancelled engagements for Monday and Tuesday following the death of his father Roy.

Burnham has previously spoken about his father, who had Alzheimer's, when explaining why he was so determined to reform adult social care in England.

The PM had been due to host a meeting of business leaders in Downing Street later.

He revealed his father did not know he had become prime minister in July, because of his condition.

Prior to entering No 10, he told the Times newspaper it was "a sadness, because he would be [proud]".

"The way I look at it, it's his achievement as well. A whole family achievement, although he doesn't know it."

He later said care home staff had shown his father footage of him entering Downing Street, calling it a "wonderful" thing.

Burnham referred to his father's experience when pledging social adult social care reforms in July, saying he wanted to help "my dad and the millions like him".

He said he had been "overwhelmed" by the skills and professionalism of care workers supporting his father.

Burnham has described how his father, a former telephone engineer, had raised him with "laughter, love and support" alongside his mother Eileen in Culcheth, Cheshire.

In his 2024 book Look North, he wrote that neither of his parents had attended university, but could have done had they "grown up in a different time and different place".

"Their knowledge of that fact seemed to make them all the more determined that their three sons would go."