New Chancellor - New Rules

9th July 2024

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.

Read the full Institute for Government report HERE
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