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Andrea Egan (Photography by Tom Oldham)

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When The House first met Andrea Egan last year, she was standing as an underdog in the race to determine who would become the next general secretary of Britain’s biggest union.

Although she had the advantage – unprecedented in Unison – of being a single challenger against an incumbent, only the flame-haired social worker herself was confident she would win. After all, she was neither a paid union official nor a Labour member; it would be the first time a lay member of Unison had been elected to lead it.

But lead the 1.3-million-member trade union she now does, after securing 60 per cent in the internal contest that attracted a typically low turnout of just seven per cent. At the time, it was another blow for No 10, which lost an ally in the defeated Christina McAnea – widely thought to be another casualty of Sir Keir Starmer’s unpopularity.

Egan not only defied the odds to become head of Unison but also got her wish with a new Prime Minister she favoured for the job. “I am a fan of Andy. I mean, he’s the King of the North!” as the left-winger from Bolton put it to us in November.

“He’s made a real positive start,” the trade union leader tells The House today, noting that she was “really pleased” with Burnham’s Makerfield by-election campaign. “The way he approached that election – he wanted to listen to what people wanted to say, and he was open and honest enough to say, ‘Look, the Labour Party’s made mistakes.’ At that time, it was really important for society to hear some honest politics.”

She has already met with the new Labour Prime Minister on several occasions amid No 10’s effort to step up engagement with unions. In meetings with Tulo (as the group of party-affiliated unions is known), she reports that “he acknowledged that the trade unions had been left aside in the previous couple of years”. There is a “much better commitment” now, “absolutely”, she says, and a “better working relationship”.

“It was reassuring when he said, ‘I’m going to put the trade unions back in the front and centre,’ because why would we not be? We represent the workers who are delivering the public services. And he’s kept good with that promise. He’s met us a number of times.”

The Unison general secretary warns that Burnham is “not exempt from criticism”, though is careful not to criticise his controversial pick of chancellor, despite having endorsed Ed Miliband before the decision was made. Did the John Healey appointment come as a disappointment?

“I won’t say I was disappointed,” she replies carefully. “I felt Ed, and it was all in my own personal view, his vision for where the country needed to go was OK, was good. But I’ve made clear internally and to Andy, it’s not really our role as trade unions to tell him who to put in his Cabinet. So, if he’s picked John Healey, he’s picked John Healey, and we’ve got to respect that. Listen, the real issue is whether they deliver or not.”

Healey became Chancellor after resigning as Starmer’s defence secretary over a lack of military spending, of course. Egan, on the other hand, backs the “Wages not weapons” campaign by some unions – passed as a motion by the TUC this year for a second time – to call for investment in public services rather than defence.

“Well, that was his previous position. He’s now Chancellor, and his budget requirement and options are much wider than just defence,” she points out.

Egan does not support any increase in defence spend, let alone a three per cent of GDP or higher target. Is she not persuaded by the threat of Russian aggression, the possibility of conflict with China, perhaps even the need to defend the Falklands at some point soon?

“What are you defending, if your own infrastructure is broken and this society is not a healthy society?” she asks in response, before adding: “When you look at recent wars, we’ve been in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen. So, is that keeping our shores safe? We’ve got to be honest about what that money is actually being spent on.”

Nor does she accept the Westminster consensus that welfare spend needs to come down.

“Well, what is welfare spending? That’s the key question,” she says. “A big chunk of that is actually pensions, and that is deferred income for people who have already put into the pot.

“Then you’ve got to be really honest and realistic that a big chunk of our trade union membership is in these low-paid, insecure jobs, in these outsourced companies, and that low pay means they need to rely on benefits to exist. So, it’s all fictitious. Like Andy says, we’ve got to start having some very honest conversations.”

Although Egan holds back from criticising Healey directly, she is happy to make clear her view of the Home Secretary, who she says has “not even answered requests for a meeting”.

Unison wants to express its concerns over the government’s proposals to increase the time migrants will have to wait for Indefinite Leave to Remain status; the standard going up from five to 10 years, rising to 15 years for those who arrived on health and social care visas.

“That was one of my disappointments – that Shabana Mahmood was left in position, simply because of her position on the migrant workers. As yet, there’s just a wall of silence at the moment.

“I think that’s absolutely unacceptable because they make these big announcements, and what they’ve got is these hundreds of thousands of workers who are just being left on a thread at the minute, wondering where their futures lie and what’s going to happen to them and their families.”

Unison, a primarily public sector union that represents more social care workers than any other, is lobbying for changes not to apply retroactively: “It was a deal – come to the country for five years, do the work, and then you get leave to remain.”

Egan also wants their visas no longer to be tied to specific employers. “It’s got to be sector-wide,” she says. “The victimisation of those workers because you’re tied to one employer – that’s where the abuse happens… There’s a fear about raising your head and reporting them because the threat is there and it is real: ‘If you speak out, we’ll report you to Home Office, we’ll sack you’.”

Her overriding argument speaks to something fundamental – and very challenging – that Burnham wants to achieve in government: the creation of a ‘national care service’. “What I have said to Andy Burnham is, ‘You’re not going to be able to deliver that without the migrant workers.’”

And was he receptive to that message? “He nodded,” she recalls. “We were in a big meeting, and he acknowledged my statement.”

Egan, who was raised by a single mum on a Bolton estate, worked in the care sector herself; in a care home at 19, then children’s residential care. A union rep, she worked her way up, becoming manager of the unit, then convenor for children’s services, and ultimately a social worker.

“I’ve been asked by a number of ministers about me joining the Labour Party. I’ve reminded them that I didn’t leave them, they left me”

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She joined the Labour Party about 16 years ago, yet was expelled in 2022 after sharing posts by Marxist group Socialist Appeal, which was proscribed under Starmer.

Asked whether she would like back in, Egan says: “I’ve been asked by a number of ministers about me joining the Labour Party. I’ve reminded them that I didn’t leave them, they left me.

They expelled me. I’m now the leader of the biggest trade union in the country, and what I have said is, ‘You need to start behaving like a Labour Party.’”

Extraordinarily for the leader of the largest trade union, which is affiliated to the Labour Party and continues to be one of its biggest donors, she is “waiting for a number of things” before considering a fresh membership application.

“They’d have to do something that would inspire me and instil my trust again that the Labour Party can behave and deliver like the Labour Party,” she says. Has she been given assurances that she would be let in? “After four years, I can reapply anyway… So, it is a choice thing.”

In the meantime, she is allowed to attend Labour conference but not permitted entry to the main hall.

When Egan last spoke to The House, she said she would not move down to London, where Unison headquarters sits on Euston Road, if she became general secretary. That has not changed – and fortunately for her, splitting one’s time between North and South is in vogue right now.

“My husband and my son are still in Bolton. That’s my family home. But whether I need to be down in the London office, the West Midlands, Glasgow – I’ll be wherever. You only need to look at my diary. I’m all over the place.

“The same is said about how many days you work. Ideally, you’d want to be working a standard working week, wouldn’t you? But that doesn’t work out either. So, I’m just wherever I need to be.”

Egan also pledged to shun the £181,000 remuneration available to the general secretary, vowing to take only a social worker’s salary, without specifying what this figure would be. Has she been able to fulfil that pledge?

“For clarity, I’m taking a social worker’s salary, and that is within the scope of a social worker’s salary,” she replies, which suggests it may be the general average of around £40,000 but could also be much higher. She has not yet donated the remainder to Unison funds as promised; it is “sat in the account because I want to do it year-end”.

So, what will her final salary be?

“It’s a social worker’s salary,” she reiterates, unwilling to clarify. “What I will do is, I’ll publicise it at the end of the year to my membership. The only people I’m accountable to, if I’m really frank, is my membership, and you don’t say anything to your membership you’re not prepared to deliver on. So, I will deliver on that, and I will let my membership know.”

In our last interview, Egan also said she would not feel comfortable with the union representing someone like Sandie Peggie, the Fife nurse who complained about having to use the same hospital dressing room as a trans colleague. “We have members come to the union with all kinds of issues, and some of them are unreasonable, but you’ve got to unpick them,” she explained.

Has this situation arisen since she has become general secretary? “You can imagine: members come with all kinds of issues. They stole money, they’ve assaulted somebody, they’ve been accused of being racist. You don’t have to represent every single member through the rulebook because there’s some standard,” she says today.

The Supreme Court ruling on sex and gender in the Equality Act is “unworkable”, she adds, before stumbling over her words, trying to decide whether she “respects” the law as it stands.

She settles on: “You’ve got to adhere to the law. But at the same time, we absolutely will be looking at how we challenge that.”

While others favour reopening the Equality Act to change how it defines gender in light of the court ruling, Egan is not so sure. “I never said we were open to opening the Equality Act because where do you stop?” she asks. The implication is that it could open a Pandora’s box; she is deeply concerned by Reform UK’s plans to scrap the Equality Act, as well as the threat the party’s potential electoral success poses to unions.

For now, her focus is primarily on a campaign pressing the government to deliver on its manifesto promise to “bring about the biggest wave of insourcing of public services in a generation”.

Have the unions involved figured out how much the insourcing they proposed would cost upfront? “Work is being done, but our bottom line is really clear: it would pale into significance to what’s already been lost through the public purse.”

Egan is “loving” her new job. “I feel more optimistic than I did last year. I feel more excited than I did last year because I’m now – I mean, that was an historic win,” she says.

“I’m a working-class woman. A working-class woman from a town who has always felt that my position as a council employee, as a trade unionist, as a community member, are connected. It’s all for the good of.

“I did say this to Keir Starmer before he left: ‘Listen, I’m not an oppositionist for the sake of it, because if you win, we win, society wins.’ I think that’s where we’re at now. We’ve got one opportunity for really trying to get us back to a better place.” 

Madonna opened the show by bringing her Confessions II short film to life on stage – vagina lasers and all

There was the slightest of technical hitches during Madonna’s performance involving some playback which… yeah

Country megastar Kacey Musgraves paid a beautiful tribute to Dolly Parton with her take on I Will Always Love You

A host of stars paid homage to George Michael in the lead-up to the 10th anniversary of his death, including queer performers like Adam Lambert and the UK’s own MNEK

Gener8ion and Yung Lean’s Storm II performance recreated their iconic music video’s jaw-dropping choreo

Lisa absolutely served with her rendition of Sawadika

Considering how far they’ve both come in their careers, we loved watching former collaborators (and homegrown stars!) Raye and Charli XCX hanging out at the VMAs

As for the night’s awards, Madonna came out on top, including an Artist Of The Year win presented to her by collaborator Charli XCX and Troye Sivan (who recently sampled the Queen of Pop’s number one hit Music on his new single Party)

Madonna and Sabrina Carpenter also won Best Collaboration and their shared speech was a little… bumpy, let’s just say that

British singer-songwriter Sienna Spiro became the latest winner of the Best New Artist title, recently won by the likes of Doja Cat, Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan (not to mention historic winners like Eminem, Lady Gaga, Nirvana and Eurythmics)

Taylor Swift also took a moment to remember ‘the ultimate showgirl’ Dolly Parton as she accepted her latest Video Of The Year win

Lucy Powell has accused Nigel Farage of hypocrisy over immigration, telling Labour conference that he “seems to hate foreigners so much” but “really does love their money”.

In her first conference speech as deputy leader, Powell described the Reform UK leader as “a modern-day love child of Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher”.

The education secretary said: “Nigel Farage wants us to all blame immigrants for our country’s ills. He wants a race to the bottom on workers’ rights and deregulation. Especially for his billionaire crypto mates. He believes in trickle-down economics, that never actually trickles down.

“Conference, he’s just a modern-day love child of Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher. And quite bizarrely, for someone who seems to hate foreigners so much, he really does love their money, doesn’t he?”

Enoch Powell delivers ‘rivers of blood’ speech

Powell also turned her fire on the Conservatives, saying they appear to be “somewhere between an identity crisis and collective amnesia”. She told delegates the British people “won’t forget the damage they did in 14 years of government. They left this country worse off, our public services hollowed out, and now they’ve got the nerve to lecture us on the crises they created.”

She said: “Our opponents are locked in the arguments of the past, while we look to the future. And that’s how we’ll win, and I am confident there’s a majority in this country who agree.”

Powell acknowledged Labour’s poor performance at the 2026 May elections, telling delegates: “We lost hundreds of great Labour representatives across the UK. There’s no sugar-coating it. We let you down and you deserved better. And I’m sorry.”

She argued that the party had been “diligently getting on with the job” but must now “make the argument and win it”. Praising the leadership of prime minister Andy Burnham, she said he was “showing us the why, not just the what”.

Powell pointed to a list of government achievements, including free school meals for more than 3 million children, recognising the state of Palestine, lifting of the two-child benefit cap and ending hereditary peers sitting in the House of Lords.

Turning to her brief at the Department for Education, Powell described education as “the passport to success” and said she led “the department of hope”.

She said: “We’re introducing new vocational GCSEs alongside T Levels and V Levels and new apprenticeships post 16.

“High quality, high esteem, underpinned by national standards in subjects in demand for the future economy. I’m ending the snobbery towards technical education.

“Not a two-tier system, far from it, but technical excellence alongside academic excellence too.”

Powell also took a swipe at former education secretary Michael Gove, who she said had accused her of “bringing back stupid”.

She said: “Michael Gove wants all the plaudits for the good bits but wants to take no responsibility for the bad. I think Ofsted would say he Requires Improvement. Although of course under the new framework he’d need attention. Let’s not give him anymore of that because he loves it too much.

“We’re not bringing back stupid, conference – we’re bringing back hope.”

Angela Rayner resigns as deputy prime minister over tax row

(Credit: Adobe Stock)

Since its introduction in 1996, the Portman Group’s Code of Practice has been a pioneering system of self-regulation, shaping how alcohol is named, pack­aged and promoted across the UK. The 30^th anniver­sary is a moment for reflection and a reminder of what effective regulation looks like: clear proportionate rules, independent oversight, and the flexibility to reflect changes in society.

Over the last three decades, the Code has provided a clear, enforceable framework to ensure marketing remains socially responsible while supporting a diverse and innovative market.

The Code also addresses a central challenge: ensuring alco­hol is marketed responsibly without relying solely on legisla­tion. Its rules are clear: products must not appeal particularly to under-18s, encourage excessive consumption, or target vulnerable groups. The Code, now in its sixth iteration, has also evolved alongside new changes in marketing and society, such as introducing stronger protections against racist, sexist or other potentially offensive marketing in 2019, with a new review to be conducted soon.

A key strength of this system is its independence and accessi­bility. Complaints can be submitted by anyone – including MPs – and are adjudicated by an Independent Complaints Panel, with the Portman Group acting as secretariat. This ensures decisions are impartial, consistent and evidence-based, maintaining trust among producers, policymakers and the public.

Its impact is evident: more than 200 products have been removed or amended following rulings made by the Panel.

Producers almost always co-operate with the Portman Group to keep marketing responsible, but in rare cases products can be removed from shelves in partnership with retailers, via measures underpinned by the Licensing Act 2003 guidance.

The Portman Group also works proactively with the industry by providing free and confidential advice to all alcohol produc­ers to assist them in complying with the Code when launching new products or marketing campaigns.

Separately, the Portman Group’s voluntary Best Practice Guidance on alcohol labelling sets out expectations regard­ing health information to consumers. These standards are widely applied across the UK market: over 99 per cent of UK alcohol products carry pregnancy warnings; 96 per cent carry unit information; and 89 per cent carry the UK Chief Medical Officers’ Low-Risk Drinking Guidelines – providing consumers with a roadmap to moderation. Additionally, around two-thirds (62 per cent) carry calorie information and close to half carry further warnings against drink driving (48 per cent) or under­age drinking (41 per cent).¹

Keeping the Portman Group at the heart of alcohol labelling

The UK government shortly intends to consult on alcohol labelling to ‘build on’ existing voluntary commitments. The Best Practice Labelling Guidance is a well-established, highly compliant set of recommendations that should act as a solid foundation for this process to ensure that consumers are provided with clear, consistent and actionable information. We encourage the government to work in partnership with the Portman Group as a pro-growth regulator and take advantage of our experience in setting and applying standards for alcohol labelling.

Finally, we hope all parliamentarians will join us in celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Portman Group Code of Practice as an internationally respected model for self-regulation, continuing its important work protecting consumers for many years to come.

Click here to read Portman Group’s findings from their 2026 Market Review. For more information contact [email protected] or visit www.portmangroup.org.uk.

Reference

1. Portman Group; Informing consumers through responsible alcohol labelling: 2026 UK Market Review (June 2026)

John Healey will pledge a “new age of industrialisation” for Britain in his speech to Labour conference.

The chancellor is expected to confirm that three new floating docks for the Royal Navy’s submarine service at HM Naval Base Clyde will be built through a UK-only competition. The project, known as Programme Euston, will provide maintenance for the UK’s fleet of nuclear submarines, including inspections, upgrades and repairs.

Healey is expected to draw on his South Yorkshire roots in his first address to Labour conference as chancellor. “My politics were shaped by the industrial heartlands of South Yorkshire”, he is set to say. 

“Today, on the site of the Orgreave pit, is Rotherham’s Advanced Manufacturing Park. Our coal mines are not coming back. But this is how Britain’s industrial past is being remade now for the modern world.

“This is the new age of industrialisation. A new confidence in Britain.”

The chancellor will also commit at least £115 million to a new marine research vessel, which is due to be operational in the early 2030s.

Both projects will be delivered by British companies, as part of what Labour describes as a greater focus on using taxpayers’ money to boost national security while supporting British jobs.

Healey said: “Britain has a proud shipbuilding heritage, and every pound of this strategic investment in a critical sector is backing British jobs on the Clyde and businesses across the UK, supporting growth in every postcode.

“By backing British shipyards, we are not only boosting national security but also securing resilience in the industries that will drive growth today while building the capabilities the country needs for the future.”

Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, said defence spending “should make Britain stronger in every sense”.

He said: “That means backing British by buying British wherever our industry can deliver.

“HM Naval Base Clyde is at the heart of our submarine service. Programme Euston will modernise it for decades to come, while backing British shipyards, workers and engineering.

“That is defence driving the reindustrialisation of Britain and strengthening our sovereign capability.”