Andy Burnham accused of concealing Man City links after dinners with chairman at Etihad

Andy Burnham is facing accusations of concealing his ties to Manchester City after a deleted register of interests from his first term as Mayor of Greater Manchester reportedly revealed two private dinners with club chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak at Etihad Stadium, totalling more than £1,000 in hospitality.

According to The Sun, the register — which covered Burnham’s first mayoral term from 2017 to 2021 and is no longer publicly accessible on the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) website — details a dinner at City’s match against Everton in August 2017, valued at £300 excluding a £35 match ticket, and a second dinner at the Manchester derby in April 2018 worth approximately £699. Deputy Mayor Sir Richard Leese is said to have attended the first dinner; only Al Mubarak is listed for the second. The register also discloses two tickets worth £150 to an Ed Sheeran concert at Etihad Stadium in May 2018, bringing the total declared hospitality to £1,187.

A GMCA statement issued on Monday made no direct reference to either dinner. It said only that Burnham “was a guest of Manchester City FC at home matches on a small number of occasions” in his capacity as Mayor, citing his attendance at Vincent Kompany’s testimonial in September 2019 — where he “met the Chairman informally in the stands” — as one example.

Speaking on The Rest Is Politics podcast, now-Prime Minister Burnham said he would “quite clearly put out there everything” he had done working with the club in his previous role, adding: “None of it is recent, actually, in terms of the meetings I had. I only had one significant meeting, actually, and that was in 2021.”

The GMCA subsequently clarified that the 2021 meeting was a formal encounter with Al Mubarak at the UK Government’s Global Investment Summit, arranged by the Department for International Trade.

Critics have pointed to the discrepancy between Burnham’s public characterisation of his contact with City’s leadership and the detail contained in the now-deleted register, arguing that the omission of the dinners from the GMCA statement amounts to concealment. Neither Burnham nor the GMCA has yet responded directly to the specific claims about the two hospitality dinners.