Assist wished: Reeves seeks heavyweight financial advisers as finances looms | Rachel Reeves

[ad_1] Within the run-up to her crunch autumn finances, Rachel Reeves will search to recruit a heavyweight financial adviser after the position of John Van Reenen is decreased.

Van Reenen, a well-respected professor from the London College of Economics (LSE) and an professional in productiveness, has been chief financial adviser to the chancellor since Labour got here to energy.

His position will probably be reduce from three days to 1 per week as he returns to the LSE in the beginning of the educational yr. Anna Valero, one other member of Reeves’s council of financial advisers, may also depart.

Treasury sources stated that whereas Van Reenen’s place was in idea part-time, his place on the chancellor’s aspect via a tumultuous 12 months had meant working “seven days per week”.

Reeves is underneath intense stress to reply to a deteriorating financial outlook with a contemporary spherical of tax rises in her autumn finances.

The chancellor has had a bruising few months after being pressured to reverse her resolution to take away the winter gasoline allowance from most pensioners and take a lot of the blame from Labour’s backbenchers for the botched £5bn in cuts to incapacity advantages.

At a Home of Lords committee on Tuesday, the chancellor positioned Van Reenen’s key perception – the necessity for increased funding to spice up the UK’s productiveness – on the coronary heart of her financial technique.

The chancellor advised friends: “The important thing drawback is productiveness and funding is the reply. Funding in human capital, funding in bodily capital and likewise funding in new applied sciences. That’s why the fiscal guidelines I set out do deal with funding in another way.”

She declined to rule out taxing wealth extra closely, telling Lord Lamont, a former Conservative chancellor within the Nineteen Nineties: “That is, with respect, what you'll have finished and did do in my place: you rightly stated that tax is a matter for a finances and we’ll set out our coverage then.”

Treasury sources stated Valero, additionally an LSE fellow, had all the time been anticipated to return to academia however would stay in contact with authorities, including that Valero and Van Reenen had labored on key coverage bulletins, together with the economic technique and the spending evaluate, which had now been accomplished.

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A Treasury spokesperson stated: “John and Anna have supplied invaluable management to the chancellor and can proceed to take action of their new capacities.”

Whitehall insiders stated as lead adviser on industrial technique, Valero’s departure risked leaving the coverage and not using a highly effective champion within the Treasury, which may make it more durable for departments tasked with grabbing the chancellor’s ear to make sure the coverage was applied successfully.

In the meantime, some Labour veterans have lengthy warned that Reeves lacks a robust enforcer who can impose the Treasury’s will throughout Whitehall, pointing to the position performed by Ed Balls when Gordon Brown was chancellor, and to that of Rupert Harrison, George Osborne’s chief financial adviser.

Van Reenen’s departure comes as Keir Starmer is beefing up his personal financial experience. For a while No 10 has wished to recruit an financial adviser to offer a counterweight to Treasury dominance in financial policymaking.