Torsten Bell is to help lead Budget preparations as Rachel Reeves seeks to recover from the most fraught period of her chancellorship. The former Resolution Foundation chief executive, who became pensions minister and parliamentary secretary to the Treasury back in January, will take on additional responsibility for economic policy.
A Reeves ally said that she values Bell as one of Labour’s “sharpest minds” and as someone who has “seen the Budget from both ends: in the room helping to write them and on the Today programme dissecting them”. Bell first entered the Treasury in his mid-twenties as a special adviser to Alistair Darling during the 2008 financial crisis before serving as Labour’s director of policy during Ed Miliband’s leadership.
“He was a serious person doing a tough job at a difficult time,” Bell said of Darling in an interview with the New Statesman last year. “He taught me that good politicians are those that understand their role is to take a decision – that is literally the bit of democracy that matters.”
Asked if Bell had, in effect, become deputy chancellor, Treasury sources emphasised that Spencer Livermore, the financial secretary to the Treasury and a former No 10 strategy director, would remain Reeves’ closest ministerial colleague but praised Bell as someone who enjoys a “lot of respect” among both the department and the wider policy world. Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, has been tasked with leading the government’s infrastructure strategy and supporting No 10 and the Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden on public-sector reform.
In other changes to Reeves’ Treasury team, Katie Martin, her long-serving chief of staff, will assume additional responsibility for business relations in what will be seen as a bid to heal relations frayed by Labour’s National Insurance increase last autumn. While in opposition, Martin led the party’s “smoked salmon offensive” and was credited with persuading 121 business leaders to endorse Labour in a pre-election letter.
Ben Nunn, Reeves’ media aide since 2023, will become director of communications and strategy and Matt Pound, her political secretary, will become political director. Both led preparations for the recent Spending Review and play a key bridging role between No 10 and No 11: Nunn previously served as Keir Starmer’s communications director and Pound worked closely with Morgan McSweeney, No 10’s chief of staff, on party rule changes and parliamentary selections.
The reshuffle, which was finalised by Reeves during her recent Cornwall holiday and will be formally announced to the Treasury by email tomorrow morning, will also see Neil Foster appointed as a special adviser. Foster, a former official for the GMB union and who worked for Reeves in opposition, will focus on relations with the parliamentary party and the trade union movement.
In the coming weeks Reeves will also announce new appointments to her Council of Economic Advisers to reflect the departure of Anna Valero and the reduced role of John Van Reenen, who will now work one day a week rather than three as he returns to the London School of Economics. During summer meetings with Starmer and McSweeney, Reeves has also stressed the importance of appointing a No 10 economic adviser. “The Treasury’s powerful but No 10 is in charge and if we want all departments and all parts of government focused on this area we need to strengthen No 10’s economic voice,” said an ally.
The Chancellor’s second Budget, which is expected to be delivered in November, will focus on two priorities: increasing economic productivity and rewarding contribution. “Rachel doesn’t accept that the economy is broken but she does accept that for a lot of working people it doesn’t feel like it works for them,” said an aide, referring to a sense that “people put a lot in but don’t get a lot out”. Last year, Bell, who has previously advocated equalising capital gains and income tax rates, told the New Statesman: “My view on tax strategy is that we do need to be careful as a country not to tax workers’ wages more than we tax everything else.”
Reeves’ team are encouraged by recent data showing that the UK is the fastest-growing G7 economy so far this year and that private-sector activity has reached a 12-month high. But they are braced for the Office for Budget Responsibility to downgrade productivity growth, necessitating tax rises to fill a black hole estimated by economists at around £20bn.
[See also: Rachel Reeves will never get serious on tax]
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