British Prime Minister’s father dies after Alzheimer's battle

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s father, Roy Burnham, has died after living in a care home with Alzheimer’s disease, Independent reports.

The report said the prime minister has previously spoken about how his father’s illness meant Roy was unaware that his son was set to become prime minister.

Burnham said the experience has been a major factor behind his efforts to reform the social care system.

Burnham cancelled all his engagements on Monday and Tuesday following his father’s death, including a planned meeting with business leaders at Downing Street.

Speaking to The Times over the summer about his father not knowing he had become prime minister, Burnham said: “That’s 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 revealed on the How to Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast that care home staff had shown his father footage of him entering Downing Street for the first time.

Burnham has pledged to “grasp the nettle” and reform England’s adult social care system, drawing on his family’s experience.

He has described England’s social care system as “broken” and “the worst of all worlds”, calling reform a “massive” public priority.

Roy Burnham, who was in his mid-80s, previously worked as a telephone engineer for the Post Office and later BT. He and Burnham’s mother, Eileen, raised their three sons in Culcheth, Cheshire.

In his 2024 book Look North, co-written with Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram, Burnham described his upbringing as “close-knit”.

He wrote: “Neither my dad, Roy, nor my mum, Eileen, went to university. But both could have done if they had grown up in a different time and in a different place. Their knowledge of that fact seemed to make them all the more determined that their three sons would go. But that did not make them pushy parents in any way. Their approach was one of quiet encouragement and confidence-building. Our family home in Culcheth was always full of music, life, laughter, love and support.”

By Bakhtiyar Abbasov