Working to make government more effective

Working to make government more effective

Report

New chancellor, new rules: How Rachel Reeves can improve the framework for fiscal policy making

Economic policy making in the UK is crying out for change.

Thomas Pope Gemma Tetlow Olly Bartrum
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Rachel Reeves outside No11 Downing Street
Rachel Reeves has become the first Labour chancellor in 14 years.

Rachel Reeves should use her first weeks as chancellor to overhaul how fiscal policy is made – and introduce changes that would give the Labour government a better chance of making progress on its priorities.

Some of the most enduring reforms made by UK chancellors have been to the structures that support economic policy making and announced early on in the life of a new government – from Gordon Brown’s granting independence to the Bank of England in 1997 to George Osborne’s creation of the Office for Budget responsibility in 2010. 

The reforms that Reeves has already proposed, as she begins her chancellorship in 2024, could be similarly transformative. New chancellor, new rules says how strengthening them would give them even more chance of this, and of embedding lasting improvements in a UK fiscal policy making culture that is crying out for change.

New chancellor, new rules

How Rachel Reeves can improve the framework for fiscal policy making.

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New chancellor, new rules, IfG report front cover
Topic
Public finances Public bodies
Keywords
Public spending Spending review Government reform Policy churn Budget
Political party
Labour
Position
Chancellor of the exchequer
Administration
Starmer government
Department
HM Treasury
Legislature
House of Commons
Public figures
Rachel Reeves
Publisher
Institute for Government

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