Keir Starmer is tightening his grip on economic policy by beefing up a committee that will help shape the 26 November budget.

Pensions minister Torsten Bell and Starmer’s new chief economic adviser, Minouche Shafik, will co-chair the “budget board”, that will meet weekly to discuss the details of the statement.

Government sources said the meetings were aimed at ensuring No 10 and No 11 were aligned and that there was not a repeat of the backlash from businesses that followed Rachel Reeves’s maiden budget.

Starmer has looked to increase his grip on economic policy in recent weeks, by appointing Shafiq, poaching Reeves’s No 2, Darren Jones, and appointing a longtime Treasury civil servant to be his principal private secretary.

Reeves and her team were blamed for a series of political missteps last year, including slashing the winter fuel allowance, while business lobby groups have blamed her £25bn increase in employer national insurance contributions (NICs) for raising the cost of hiring and forcing them to push up prices.

With the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) widely expected to downgrade its forecasts, the chancellor is expected to have to find significant tax increases in November, to avoid busting her fiscal rules in five years’ time.

Bell, the former director of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, has previously suggested a series of radical tax policies, including on inheritance tax, pensions and national insurance.

But government officials confirmed the panel would also include Reeves’s chief of staff, Katie Martin, who recently took on the job of liaising with businesses on Reeves’s behalf, and Varun Chandra, who canvasses firms for No 10. The trio are expected to bring a business perspective to the discussions, which is likely to inject a note of caution around more radical policies.

Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who was seen by some in government as one of the driving forces behind the botched welfare reforms at the spring statement, will also attend.

The prime minister’s new chief secretary, Darren Jones – previously a Treasury minister – and the communications directors from both No 10 and No 11, will sit on the board, too, officials confirmed.

Also on the board will be Starmer’s new communications chief, Tim Allan, a veteran of Tony Blair’s time in government, with the former prime minister once describing him as “even more right wing than me”.

Business groups have insisted Reeves should look elsewhere if she wants to raise more revenue, with the CBI’s chief executive, Rain Newton-Smith, arguing in the Guardian on Tuesday that Labour should instead consider breaking its manifesto pledges not to increase taxes on “working people”.

She also called for radical tax reform, including on VAT thresholds for firms, and the much-criticised stamp duty.

In the aftermath of last year’s budget, which included £40bn of tax rises, Reeves told the CBI’s annual conference that she was “not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes”.