Burnham's No 10 Expected To Undergo Restructuring Under Chief Of Staff James Purnell
James Purnell, then a Labour MP, pictured leaving Parliament in June 2009 (Alamy)
3 min read
The Prime Minister’s No 10 office in Downing Street is expected to undergo a significant restructuring under Andy Burnham and his chief of staff James Purnell, in addition to the founding of a new ‘No 10 North’ in Manchester, PoliticsHome understands.
Purnell, the former Blairite minister who has been picked by Burnham as his chief of staff, was a member of the expert advisory group that recently helped guide a paper on how a reformed Downing Street department would work.
Published by the Future Governance Forum (FGF) think tank in November last year, the report proposed a streamlined ‘Executive Office for the Prime Minister’.
The new set-up would see No 10 configured around four functions: a politics and strategy group; a policy and delivery group; a diplomacy and security group; and a private office. A communications team and political office would also operate across all four.
“This new Downing Street is not a new bureaucracy, adding more complexity to the centre,” the FGF paper reads.
“The entire intention is that it should be the opposite: streamlining the centre of government, with the very centre attempting to do less directly itself by setting clearer expectations of what can and should be done elsewhere in Whitehall (and what can and should be stopped altogether).”
A well-placed source described it as “nailed on” that Burnham’s No 10 would implement at least some of the FGF’s recommendations on a new structure, and insiders say Burnham will enact No 10 reform as part of his wider reset.
The politics and strategy group is the function considered by insiders as best-suited to being based out of No 10 North.
“I think they want to move a lot of senior people there. It’s real,” the same source quoted above said of the planned new encampment in Manchester.
The incoming prime minister has promised that the Manchester office will act as “the nerve-centre of a rewired Britain”. The plan is not to duplicate the work of London’s No 10 but to task No 10 North specifically with driving his “devolution and growth agenda”.
Caroline Simpson, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s chief executive who is credited with helping Burnham as mayor to deliver fast growth in the region, will lead that work and be based in No 10 North as the prime minister's deputy chief of staff.
Burnham would like to see No 10 North located at a government hub already under construction, the Manchester Digital Campus in Ancoats, but it is not due to be completed until 2032.
Those working on the project say other sites in Greater Manchester fit the bill, however, and PoliticsHome understands that interim arrangements are being made to get the new office up and running “as quickly as possible”.
The independent Institute for Government (IfG) think tank also supports breaking up the Cabinet Office and creating a ‘Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’.
Commenting on Burnham’s plans for a ‘No 10 North’, IfG associate director Hannah Keenan said of 10 Downing Street: “It has been horribly underpowered for too long. Now, this isn’t going to fix it…
“You need to do much more fundamental reforms to the centre of government. You still have an enormous Cabinet Office that is quite amorphous and too large and unfocused and doesn’t really support the prime minister properly – what are you doing with that?
“But it is fine and good to bolster the power of No 10.”
Burnham is set to become the UK's seventh prime minister in a decade later this month after a large majority of Labour MPs nominated the former Manchester mayor to replace Keir Starmer on Thursday.
