Rachel Reeves has not been sidelined by Number 10, a senior minister has said after Sir Keir Starmer reshuffled his Downing Street team.
Monday’s shake-up saw the Chancellor’s deputy, Darren Jones, move into a new role as chief secretary to the Prime Minister.
Sir Keir also brought in Baroness Minouche Shafik, a former Bank of England deputy governor, as his chief economic adviser and senior Treasury mandarin Dan York-Smith as his principal private secretary.
The reshuffle has been seen as a sign the Prime Minister is seeking to boost Number 10’s economic firepower ahead of the budget this autumn, leading to the suggestion that Ms Reeves’s role has been diminished.
But speaking to Sky News on Tuesday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper denied that the Chancellor had been “sidelined”, insisting the situation was “quite the reverse”.
She said: “I think the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have always worked extremely closely together and continue to do so.”
Following the mini-reshuffle, Sir Keir will bring together his senior ministers on Tuesday – also the Prime Minister’s birthday – for their first Cabinet meeting after the summer recess.
On Monday, he stressed that the Government was moving into its “second phase” with a “more powerful Number 10” and a “focus on delivery”.
Preparations for the budget are likely to dominate the coming weeks, with Ms Reeves facing the prospect of introducing significant tax hikes or spending cuts if she is to meet her self-imposed rule of balancing day-to-day spending with tax receipts by 2029-30.
Asked if Downing Street would have more input following Sir Keir’s changes, Ms Cooper told Sky News that “ultimately, the Chancellor always writes the budget” but this was “always with conversations and discussions with the Prime Minister throughout, so you get that strong support”.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch compared the mini-reshuffle to “shifting the deckchairs on the Titanic”, adding: “I don’t think it’s going to make any difference.”
Speaking to reporters on a visit to Scotland, she said: “I don’t know what this says about his confidence in the Chancellor, but the fact that he’s taken his chief secretary of the Treasury and put him into Number 10 does not inspire me with confidence because he’s one of the people who’s been making the mess.”
