Prime Minister Andy Burnham is pursuing a plan to strip the Treasury of much of its control over growth policy, transferring key powers to a new No 10-led unit based in Manchester, dubbed "No 10 North" and overseen by his cabinet ally Louise Haigh. Burnham argues that the Treasury's dual role of driving growth while controlling public spending creates institutional caution that stifles ambition, blaming "Treasury brain" thinking for unpopular decisions under Keir Starmer, including cuts to winter fuel allowance and concessions to City lobbying over a bank windfall tax. The move echoes previous attempts by prime ministers to curb Treasury dominance, from Harold Wilson's short-lived Department for Economic Affairs to power struggles under Thatcher, Blair and Brown.

Central to Burnham's strategy is devolution, with plans to hand additional powers to metro mayors so that growth policy scattered across housing, education and planning departments can be better coordinated. Ruth Curtice of the Resolution Foundation, a former Treasury official, suggested the new unit's biggest value could lie in cross-departmental coordination rather than replacing Treasury functions outright, while former Brown adviser Michael Jacobs compared the idea to the Office for Climate Change and floated a broader growth unit staffed by officials from across government. Economists, including Deutsche Bank's Sanjay Raja, are also weighing in on how the restructuring might reshape economic policymaking.