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The Prime Minister was due to meet business leaders this afternoon

Andy Burnham's father has died at the age of 86, after a lengthy dementia battle.

No10 has confirmed Andy Burnham will cancel his engagements today and tomorrow following the death of his dad, Roy.

The Prime Minister has previously spoken out about his father's care, who spent his final years living with Alzheimer's disease in a care home in northern England.

Roy, who was a telephone engineer when he was younger, died aged 86.

Mr Burnham has said his father's diagnosis was his motivation to reform England's "broken" social care system, vowing to "expend quite a lot of political capital" on improvements.

When the Makerfield MP became Prime Minister in July, he said that his father's illness meant he was unaware of his son's achievement.

"That’s a sadness because he would be [proud]," the Makerfield MP told The Times.

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

However, Mr Burnham said that staff at the care home told him Roy had "momentarily" been aware as he watched his son walk up Downing Street on the day he became Prime Minister.

The manager at his father's care home told him: "We all knew what time you might be coming up Downing Street so we got Roy in his chair, and we got the telly right in front of him, and six of us stood around him and all said, "Roy, look.'"

Mr Burnham said: "She said he turned and momentarily, they said, 'We thought he knew.'"

Roy was diagnosed with prostate cancer towards the end of pandemic, later developing advanced Alzheimer's disease.

Outlining his plans as Prime Minister, Mr Burnham said he would support "my dad and the millions like him" as the current system now operates.

Mr Burnham said: “Millions of people are going without their basic needs being met because the system isn’t good enough to meet their basic daily needs, so that’s the first thing.

ANDY BURNHAM'S VOW TO IMPROVE SOCIAL CARE:

"Second thing, you have millions of family carers, people like my mum, who try to care for my dad at home, who in the end are actually the main issue.

"We discovered as a family, my mum was sinking under the pressure of trying to make it work when the care system couldn’t make it work for her.

"They pay a lot of money for a very poor standard of care and some people, the most unfortunate, those who get let’s say, Alzheimer’s at an early age, pay with everything down to £23,000 of their savings, so they can spend hundreds of thousands of pounds.

"They can be cleaned out by the whole experience of being unlucky enough to get dementia."

The Prime Minister has cancelled plans to meet with business leaders this afternoon.

Tomorrow, he was set to address to the TUC conference tomorrow in Brighton after chairing the weekly Cabinet meeting.

Since becoming Labour leader, Mr Burnham has set out plans to reform the adult social care system, speaking candidly about his father's time in care.

Cross-party colleagues have started sharing their condolences with the Prime Minister.

Angela Rayner shared on social media: "My thoughts are with Andy and his family at this terribly difficult and sad time."

Meanwhile, Sir James Cleverly wrote: "My deepest condolences to the Prime Minister on the death of his father."