Rupert Harrison

Rupert Harrison is the former chief of staff to the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.

After the 2015 general election Harrison left his post with Osborne and is expected to take up a job in the city.

Known as one of the architects of a multi-year public sector pay freeze, Harrison was given an 18 per cent pay rise in 2013-2014 from £80,000 to £95,000. According to the Guardian,

It has been reported that Harrison has been courted by various hedge funds, and the pay rise, tucked away in a footnote to the salary list, may have been an attempt to take his earnings closer to what he might earn in the private sector.

Background

Born in Surrey, the 31 year old ex-Eton head boy studied PPE at Magdalen Oxford. Harrison started his career with four years at think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies before securing a job with Osborne in 2006 as his chief economic adviser.

Harrison was ranked 39th (a place held jointly with Matthew Hancock and Rohan Silva) in a list of the 'Top 100 most influential Right-wingers' by The Telegraph in October 2009. By October 2011 he had risen to 25th in ranking and was described by the paper as follows:

Smart, urbane and extremely clever, Harrison has been described as one half of George Osborne’s brain. We hesitate to say that he is to Osborne what Ed Balls was to Gordon Brown, but we’d mean it in a positive sense. More important to Osborne than ever. Silva was ranked number 19.

"Harrison is known for his preternatural calm, and ability to come out with policies like the inheritance tax cut when the party needs some emergency ballast."

Affiliations

• Treasury Council of Economic Advisers - appointed to this panel in 2014 alongside three other Osborne advisers Jennifer Donnellan, Eleanor Wolfson and Neil O’Brien.