Treasury staff issues: Reeves is missing the key people to find the missing billions

The exit of her economic advisers has put the chancellor under extra pressure to shape policy

- Catherine Neilan & Barney Macintyre

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, will be spending the summer looking to find an estimated £30bn in this November's budget, without breaking Labour's election manifesto commitments not to raise income tax, VAT or employee national insurance (NI) - and without some key advisers.

Her chief economic adviser, John Van Reenen, is cutting back his time at the Treasury to just one day a week. Anna Valero, who has been on leave from the London School of Economics, is returning to academia.

"I don't understand how they've lost their economics adviser [Ravinder Athwal, earlier this month], the civil servant who was there to provide support, and John and Anna at the same time," said one source.

"It is a crazy time to be losing all those people, and mad that they have so little capacity."

Some believe it is, in part, about who Reeves has chosen to listen to, over who she has not. Van Reenen, a widely respected academic, co-wrote a paper last year that called for the UK to rejoin the EU single market "as an effective spur to competition and productivity". Labour has repeatedly ruled out such an approach.

But there are other sources of tension too. Varun Chandra, Keir Starmer's business adviser, is said to have "strong views from what he has heard from his mates", running counter to Van Reenen's more academic approach. It is Chandra, say sources, who is behind the push to reverse taxing non-doms on their overseas income, despite evidence suggesting the majority of individuals in the bracket are unaffected and reports of those fleeing the country being overcooked.