Darren Jones (screenwriter)

Darren Paul Jones (born 13 November 1986) is a British politician who has served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury since July 2024, having previously been Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury from September 2023 to July 2024. A member of the Labour Party, he has been Member of Parliament for Bristol North West since 2017. He chaired the House of Commons Business and Trade Select Committee from 2020 to 2023.

Early life and education

Darren Jones was born on 13 November 1986 in Bristol, and grew up in Lawrence Weston. He attended Portway Community School in Shirehampton, a state comprehensive, and has spoken about his experiences of growing up in poverty.

Jones studied human bioscience at the University of Plymouth, where he was elected President of the Students' Union. He worked in the National Health Service and served on the boards of the University of Plymouth and the Plymouth NHS Trust, and had a weekly newspaper column in the ''Plymouth Herald''. He later read law at the University of the West of England and the University of Law in Bristol before being admitted as a solicitor.

Career

Legal career

Jones initially worked at Womble Bond Dickinson LLP, before becoming an in-house counsel with BT, advising on data privacy, cyber-security, telecommunications and consumer law. In Bristol, he started a mentoring programme seeking to bring young people from his old school into the legal profession. Following the Brexit referendum in 2016, he sat on the board of UK Legal Futures, which brought together leading lawyers to advise politicians and civil servants on legal questions raised by Brexit.

Political career

Jones stood as the Labour candidate in Torridge and West Devon at the 2010 general election, coming fourth with 5.3% of the vote behind the incumbent Conservative MP Geoffrey Cox, the Liberal Democrat candidate, and the UKIP candidate. Jones later sat on the national youth committees of the Co-operative Party and Unite the Union and was elected to Unite's Regional Political Committee in the South West.

At the 2015 general election, Jones stood in Bristol North West, coming second with 34.4% of the vote behind the incumbent Conservative MP Charlotte Leslie. Following the 2015 election, Jones joined the campaign of Labour leadership hopeful Andy Burnham as its South West Co-ordinator, and chaired Marvin Rees's successful campaign to become Mayor of Bristol.

In 2016 he joined the Remain campaign in the EU membership referendum and chaired the Young Lawyers' Network, a nationwide group campaigning for a vote to remain in the European Union in the 2016 referendum. Later in 2016, he went to the United States to work for the Clinton campaign in Miami during that year's US Presidential election.

Jones was also the chair of Labour Digital, a Labour think tank.

Parliamentary career

1st term (2017–2019)

At the 2017 general election, Jones was elected the Member of Parliament for Bristol North West, overturning a Conservative majority of 4,944 on a 9.2 percent swing. In his maiden speech, Jones noted that he was the first Darren ever elected to Parliament.

Between 2017 and 2020, Jones was a member of the cross-party Science and Technology Committee and the European Scrutiny Committee.

In 2019, then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Tom Watson, appointed Jones as the Convenor of the Future Britain Group, which was established following a number of defections from the Labour Party in a bid to prevent further defections.

2nd term (2019–2024)

Jones was re-elected at the 2019 general election, with an increased majority of 5,692 but a decreased vote share of 48.9%.

Following Keir Starmer's election as Labour leader in April 2020, Jones was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary jointly to Shadow Justice Secretary David Lammy and Shadow Attorney General Charlie Falconer, and served until his election as Chair of the House of Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.

Jones built a national profile as Chair of the House of Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, winning a number of awards and attracting millions of views of his committee hearings on social media.

He led on a number of issues including the withholding of redundancy payments from AstraZeneca workers, the campaign to increase miners' pensions through the Mineworkers Pension Scheme, and the British Post Office scandal, the right for workers to join a trade union at Amazon and the dispute related to changes at Royal Mail. In 2020, he introduced the UK's first citizens' assembly on net zero to Parliament. He has also led Parliamentary inquiries into the decarbonisation of heating, electricity and industry, as well as reform of the energy market in the United Kingdom.

Jones also sat on the National Security Strategy Joint Committee and, following the introduction of the National Security and Investment Act 2021, became responsible as Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee for holding the Government to account for its use of national security powers. He has also served on the Liaison Committee, the committee that scrutinises the Prime Minister. As a member of that committee, Jones had frequent notable exchanges with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, including during the final days prior to Johnson announcing his resignation in July 2022 when Jones informed him that his cabinet was waiting for him in 10 Downing Street to tell him to resign.

Jones was the founder and chair of the Interparliamentary Forum on Emerging Technologies, a global network of legislators interested in emerging technology regulation, and in 2021 was appointed to the Online Safety Bill pre-legislative scrutiny committee. In 2021, he passed the Forensic Science Regulator Act 2021, having been successful in the ballot for a Private Members Bill, giving the forensic science regulator statutory powers to ensure service quality standards from the privatised forensic science companies working with the police.

In 2022, Jones was appointed as a member of the UK-EU Parliamentary Partnership Assembly.

In the 2023 British shadow cabinet reshuffle, he joined the shadow cabinet as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He has been described as one of the Labour Party's strongest communicators and became one of the most recognisable faces of the shadow cabinet during the 2024 general election campaign.

3rd term (2024–)

At the 2024 general election, Jones was again re-elected, with an increased vote share of 49.6% and an increased majority of 15,669; representing the largest majority ever recorded in Bristol North West.

Jones was appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury and attends Cabinet. As deputy to the Chancellor, he is responsible for public spending, delivering the government's ten year national infrastructure strategy and leading for HM Treasury on the digital transformation of public services. Since April 2025, he has also been responsible for the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA).

Jones apologised for comments he made after the March 2025 United Kingdom spring statement, where he used the example of pocket money when talking about cuts to Personal Independence Payments for disabled people. The Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves had said it was "not the right analogy" when asked about the comment in an interview.

On the BBC's '' Question Time'' on 12 June 2025, Jones said of English Channel migrant crossings "And when you see that the majority of the people in these boats are children, babies and women… you have got to take note". Jones rejected fellow panellist Zia Yusuf's statement that 90% of cross-Channel migrants were men. In 2024, 76% of migrants were adult men, while in the first three months of 2025 it was 81% adult men, with children being four-fifths male. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called for Jones to retract his statement and apologise. The following day, Jones said that the majority of migrants were men, and that his statement about women and children being the majority referred to one visit he had made to Border Security Command.

Political positions

Politico Europe has described Jones as being on the Labour right, and he has described Tony Blair as one of his political heroes.

He has been noted as a prominent voice in debates on technology policy in Parliament, and has described himself as a techno-optimist. He supported Remain in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. He has supported electoral reform to a proportional system. He has opposed ending UK arms sales to Israel during the Gaza war, saying that it would not end the war. In 2025 Jones said the era of globalisation "ended" following Donald Trump's tariffs.

Jones told his constituents in November 2024 that he would not support the assisted dying legislation being brought to Parliament by his Labour colleague Kim Leadbeater.

Personal life

Jones is married to Australian net zero consultant and technology entrepreneur Lucy Symons-Jones, who co-founded the renewable energy company Village Infrastructure in 2011. Due to financial troubles, Symons-Jones left the business in 2014. They have three daughters. Jones became a vegan in 2014, for reasons related to carbon emissions and agriculture, although he is sometimes vegetarian.

Jones was sworn of the Privy Council on 10 July 2024, entitling him to be styled "The Right Honourable" for life.

References

Notes

External links

Official website
archived on 8 June 2017
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Darren
1986 births
Living people
21st-century English lawyers
Alumni of the University of Plymouth
BT Group people
English solicitors
Chief Secretaries to the Treasury
Labour Friends of Israel
Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
Politics of Bristol
UK MPs 2017–2019
UK MPs 2019–2024
UK MPs 2024–present
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom