The prime minister will need a “much larger” economic team in No.10 for his government to deliver an effective growth strategy, a new report warns.
The Institute for Government report, authored by Giles Wilkes, a senior fellow at the think tank, calls for No.10 to have a fully staffed economic function of 20 or more employees helping the prime minister to set the growth strategy.
The report, published in partnership with Imperial College London, says the team should have a variety of skills and backgrounds and should be a mixture of political and official – “Treasury experts, people with familiarity with the party, sector and policy specialists”.
“There is no science to saying what the right number of such staff is, but it is much more than is currently normal,” the report says.
The prime minister, Keir Starmer, has described economic growth as the government's number one priority and committed to be the fastest growing country in the G7. The UK's growth (1.4% in 2025) is currently below the US and Canada and above the rest of the G7 (France, Germany, Japan and Italy), according to the International Monetary Fund.
Wilkes’ report, How the centre of government can design better growth policy, says the ambition to raise UK GDP growth is "important, difficult – and entirely achievable" and argues the government already "has a steady understanding of policies it should pursue, one that it shares with most of its predecessors".
It says the puzzle is "why it has so often proven difficult to follow through on what is needed" and argues that "the organisation of the leadership of government holds many of the answers".
Wilkes notes that in recent years, “it has not been unusual to hear of the...economically qualified staff in support of the prime minister numbering just two or three, forcing No.10 to rely on help from the Treasury”.
“This is much fewer than any department might have in its strategic function,” it adds.
By comparison, the report says “it is normal for the White House to have three top academics supported by more than 20 economically trained staff”, while the German chancellor has around 900 staff to help in setting and managing the strategic direction of governments, “of which a few dozen may be economically focused”.
“Whatever limits are preventing the prime minister having exactly the staff needed, be they pay rules, space constraints or artificial rules about adviser numbers, they should be discarded entirely,” the report says.
“These are extremely consequential jobs, and the team should have all the resources it needs to have the candidates it wants.”
The team will “need to be of sufficient seniority to be able to stand up to the powerful politicians around them, including the prime minister himself”, the report adds.
“The people staffing this function need more than just skill or experience – they must possess the kind of heft that can stand up to the other pressures that will inevitably be pushing the prime minister in directions away from the economic strategy.”
The report notes that No.10 last year "set about reinvigorating its economic and political staff, installing a new principal private secretary from the Treasury, a chief economic adviser and a leading politician, Darren Jones, into the new position of chief secretary to the prime minister". It says the intent behind these moves is "welcome, but it should be only a start".
The report makes a series of recommendations for No.10, including "ruthless prioritisation" of time and effort and looking to institutions and science for examples of success. However, it argues that "for the growth agenda, the other insights of this report would have little value if the No.10 team lacks the clout to keep the government in line with the prime minister’s priorities".
“Those against the idea that the prime minister needs more support will observe that for centuries the prime minister could call on the Treasury if he or she wanted economic advice, and that a small, diligent Policy Unit can commission advice from other departments for other kinds of analysis.
“However, relying on other departments puts the prime minister in a poor position to provide challenge to the view elsewhere in government, rather than just to take lines from them. Ultimately, if economic skills are insufficiently strong outside the Treasury, the finance ministry will set direction by default, even if it does not actively seek this influence.”
The paper also warns that the absence of a proper strategy function in No.10 “will not simply mean the Treasury taking over, reluctantly or not, but the predominance of other, worse instincts of Downing Street”.
It quotes an official who said, “if you do not have a proper strategy function then that space gets filled by comms”, and argues this “however necessary, tends to be the very opposite of strategic”.
The report is not the first to call for a stronger No.10 team. The IfG's Commission on the Centre of Government in 2024 called for a new Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and said it should have an economics and finance function led by a “heavyweight adviser to the prime minister” and supported by both official and political expertise.
Lord Maude’s 2023 independent review of governance and accountability in the civil service similarly called for an Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet as the strategic centre of government, while the Future Governance Forum has argued for giving the prime minister "his own department: a properly resourced office built around his agenda, with levers that work and including the capacity to appoint junior ministers within it”.