THE Northern Echo continues its coverage of the Labour Party leadership campaign with Andy Burnham explaining why members in the North-East should vote for him.

IN the months since our devastating Election defeat, Labour has been consumed by a round of painful soul-searching.

I spent the early stages of my leadership campaign focusing on the most difficult issues we heard on the doorstep - the deficit, immigration and benefits - because we won't win until we regain the public's trust on them. But this doesn't mean copying the Tories. Far from it. Labour wins when we are better than them.

In the 21st century, what is Labour for? My answer is simple: to help everyone get on in life.

The hopes of people at all levels of society are pretty much the same: a secure job; a decent home; a good standard of living; prospects for their kids; and proper care for their parents. But, in our insecure, modern world, for far too many people, these dreams are dying.

It will be the mission of the Labour Party I lead into Government to revive them - and turn the light of hope back on. To do this, I will bring forward the most radical and far-reaching Labour vision for the country since the 1945 post-war Attlee Government. That Government civilised the last century. Mine will do the same for the 21st.

My manifesto has bigger ideas than Labour has put forward in the recent past. They show how life can be better tomorrow than it is today and provide something in very short supply in this country right now - hope.

One of the greatest failures of post-war public policy has been this country's lack of focus on technical education. Our schools system is geared towards the academic, University route. Young people who aspire to go on that route have clear goals to aim for and support to get there. But the same cannot be said for young people who aspire to a high-quality technical education.

I believe in comprehensive education. I will bring forward a new vision to reinvigorate it for the 21st century, based on true parity between academic and technical education, and I am delighted that North West Durham MP Pat Glass will lead a review into this if I'm leader. We will restore a local role in overseeing schools, rejecting the growing market of free schools and academies.

I will propose a graduate tax to replace tuition fees for university and extend support for apprenticeships. No young person should have to start their career weighed down by a millstone of debt.

I will take Labour out of the 'Westminster bubble' and make it the vehicle for the hopes and dreams of ordinary people once again. And I am proud to have so much support for my campaign to do that from the region's MPs, both longstanding members and newly elected, and I joined many of them at the Durham Miners Gala this summer.

Days before we marched, the first Budget from a majority Conservative Government in 19 years took even more hope away from young people and made it harder for them to make their way in a challenging world. It raised the prospect of a two-tier workforce, dividing young and old, and disproportionately hit families in work. Meanwhile, David Cameron continues to wage his campaign of demonisation against trade unions that people rely on in a fragmented and casualised workplace.

I welcome plans to raise the minimum wage but, by applying the measure only to those 25 and over, the national minimum wage has now become a five tier system, with your pay decided by the year you were born not the job you do. I want the raise to apply to every age group.

I will trust our councillors again and the time has come to trust local communities with more financial freedom too. We need the most ambitious house building programme in half a century – the best way to bring down the Housing Benefit bill is to let councils build homes again. For too many people, the dream of having a place to call their own has faded away. My vision is of a society where everyone has an affordable home to rent or to own.

But there’s still the danger of losing your home to the costs of social care. I am determined to make Labour the Party that helps everyone protect what they’ve worked for. Labour created the NHS to free people from the fear of medical fees. We now need to do the same with care charges. So I am committed to extending the NHS principle to social care – where everybody contributes and everybody is covered.

The next few years after a bad defeat, will be defining for the Labour movement. We will either rise to the challenge with bold solutions to big problems or we will be written off as timid, small and irrelevant. The change I offer is to take our Party out of Westminster, put it back in touch with people across our country and I would like to ask for your support in doing that.