Paul Johnson

Why organisations work with Paul Johnson

• He led the Institute for Fiscal Studies through fourteen years of fiscal events, Budgets and Spending Reviews, and is the economist most often cited when journalists need the numbers explained.
• He has been inside the machinery: Director of Public Spending at HM Treasury and Chief Economist at the Department for Education, so he speaks to how decisions are actually made, not how they are reported.
• His book Follow the Money is the clearest public account of how Britain raises and spends roughly £1 trillion a year, and it gives a board a shared vocabulary for fiscal risk.
• Eleven years on the UK Climate Change Committee mean he can connect net zero policy to the capital allocation choices it forces on boards, not just the headline target.
• As Provost of The Queen’s College, Oxford, he now sits at the intersection of economic policy, higher education funding and long-term institutional strategy.

Biography highlights

• Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2011 to 2025.
• Provost of The Queen’s College, Oxford, from August 2025.
• Author of Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost? (2023), Sunday Times bestseller.
• Weekly columnist for The Times; presenter of Austerity Audit on BBC Radio 4.
• CBE, 2018, for services to social sciences and economics.
• Honorary doctorates from UCL, York, Sussex and Exeter; member of the UK Climate Change Committee for eleven years.

Biography

The state raises and spends roughly £1 trillion a year in the UK. Most boards treat that figure as background. It is not. Tax policy, departmental budgets and the demographics behind them shape the cost of capital, the cost of labour and the regulatory weather every business operates in.

For fourteen years as Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson was the public translator of those numbers. The IFS Budget briefings he led became the reference point for journalists, civil servants and parliamentary committees on fiscal events. Follow the Money, his 2023 book, is the most readable account of UK public finances in print, and it became a Sunday Times bestseller.

His credibility is built on direct experience inside the system. He was Director of Public Spending at HM Treasury, Chief Economist at the Department for Education, and Deputy Head of the Government Economic Service. He served eleven years on the UK Climate Change Committee, where the policy gap between net zero ambition and capital allocation is most visible. He sat on the councils of the ESRC and the Royal Economic Society.

In August 2025 he became Provost of The Queen’s College, Oxford. He continues to write a weekly column for The Times and to advise organisations whose strategic decisions are shaped by UK and global fiscal policy. He was appointed CBE in 2018 for services to social sciences and economics.

Key speaking topics

• UK public finances and fiscal policy
• Tax, welfare and pensions reform
• Macroeconomic outlook and capital allocation
• Income inequality and the distributional effects of policy
• Climate change economics and net zero financing
• Government spending priorities and trade-offs

Ideal for

• Boards and executive committees of UK and internationally exposed companies
• CFOs, treasurers and heads of strategy planning under fiscal and tax uncertainty
• Investor and asset-management audiences focused on macro and policy risk
• Public-sector leadership and regulated-industry executives

Audience outcomes

• A clear read of how the next Budget, Spending Review or fiscal event is likely to land
• A shared vocabulary for fiscal risk that connects Treasury decisions to operating choices
• A grounded view of how net zero policy will translate into capital and tax pressure
• A sharper sense of where UK macroeconomic constraints will most affect their sector
• Direct answers to the questions a CFO or chair actually wants to ask an economist