Darren Jones | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2017 | |
| Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury | |
| Assumed office 4 September 2023 | |
| Leader | Keir Starmer |
| Preceded by | Pat McFadden |
| Chair of the Business and Trade Select Committee[a] | |
| In office 6 May 2020 – 4 September 2023 | |
| Preceded by | Rachel Reeves |
| Succeeded by | Liam Byrne |
| Member of Parliament for Bristol North West | |
| Assumed office 8 June 2017 | |
| Preceded by | Charlotte Leslie |
| Majority | 5,692 (10.2%) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Darren Paul Jones 13 November 1986 Bristol, England |
| Political party | Labour |
| Spouse | Lucy Symons-Jones |
| Children | 3 |
| Alma mater | University of Plymouth University of the West of England University of Law |
| Signature |  |
| Website | Official website |
Darren Paul Jones (born 13 November 1986)[1] is a British Labour politician serving as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury since 2023.[2] He previously served as Chair of the House of Commons Business and Trade Select Committee from 2020 to 2023. He has been the Member of Parliament for Bristol North West since 2017.[3]
Jones was born in his constituency of Bristol North West and grew up in Lawrence Weston. He attended Portway Community School in Shirehampton, a state comprehensive, before studying human bioscience at the University of Plymouth, where he was subsequently elected President of the Students' Union. Jones 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.[1][4]
Jones specialises in technology law, and 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.[5]
In Bristol, Jones started a mentoring programme seeking to bring young people from his old school into the legal profession. He later chaired the Young Lawyers' Network, a nationwide group campaigning for a vote to remain in the European Union in the 2016 referendum,[6] and 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.[7]
Jones first fought a general election as Labour's candidate in Conservative-held Torridge and West Devon at the 2010 general election. He finished in 4th place, behind the incumbent Conservative MP Geoffrey Cox, and the Liberal Democrats and UKIP, winning 5.3% of the vote,[8] a decrease of 5.3% from the 2005 general election.[9] 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.[10]
In 2012 Jones was selected to contest his home constituency of Bristol North West for the 2015 general election, which had been gained by the Conservatives in 2010, with Labour falling into third place.[11] The incumbent Conservative MP Charlotte Leslie was re-elected, with Jones winning 34.4% of the vote, an increase of 8.5%[12] [13]
Following the 2015 election, Jones joined the campaign of Labour leadership hopeful Andy Burnham as its South West Co-ordinator, and chaired Marvin Rees' successful campaign to become Mayor of Bristol. In 2016 he joined the Remain campaign in the EU membership referendum and later worked for the Clinton campaign in Miami during that year's US Presidential election.[14]
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.[15] In his maiden speech, Jones noted that he was the first Darren ever elected to Parliament.[16] 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.[17]
Jones was re-elected at the 2019 general election, with an increased majority of 5,692 but a decreased vote share of 48.9%.[18][19] 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,[20] and served until his election as Chair of the House of Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.
Jones is also the chair of Labour Digital, a Labour think tank.[21]
Through his select committee work, Jones has led on issues related to the economy, business and jobs as well as national security and climate change.
Jones has been a prominent campaigner in a number of labour disputes, including the withholding of redundancy payments from Astra Zeneca workers,[22] the campaign to increase miners' pensions through the Mineworkers Pension Scheme,[23] the historic miscarriage of justice behind the British Post Office scandal,[24] the right for workers to join a trade union at Amazon[25] and the dispute related to changes at Royal Mail.[26][27]
Jones introduced the UK's first citizens assembly on net zero to Parliament,[28] and has led Parliamentary inquiries into the decarbonisation of heating,[29] electricity [30][31] and industry,[32] as well as reform of the energy market in the United Kingdom.[33]
Jones sits 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.[34]
A prominent member of the Liaison Committee, the committee that scrutinises the Prime Minister, Jones had frequent notable exchanges with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson,[35][36][37] 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 No 10 Downing Street to tell him to resign.[38]
In 2021, Jones 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.[39][40]
Jones has been recognised as a leading voice on technology policy.[41] In 2019 he co-chaired a Parliamentary inquiry into technology ethics.[42] He leads the Parliamentary Internet, Communications and Technology Forum [43] and the Data Poverty [44] and Technology and National Security All Party Parliamentary Groups.[45] In January 2021, during the Covid pandemic, he introduced a Ten Minute Rule Bill seeking to force internet service providers to offer a social tariff to families in receipt of Universal Credit.[46] Jones is 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.[47][48]
In 2022, Jones was appointed as a member of the UK-EU Parliamentary Partnership Assembly [49] which was established under the terms of the 2021 Trade and Co-operation Agreement between the UK and the EU and acts as a forum for parliamentarians to exchange views on the implementation and operation of the Agreement.
In the 2023 British shadow cabinet reshuffle, he joined the shadow cabinet as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury.[50]
Jones is married to net zero consultant and technology entrepreneur Lucy Symons-Jones, who co-founded the renewable energy company Village Infrastructure. They have two daughters.[1]
Jones became a vegan in 2014, for reasons related to carbon emissions and agriculture, although he is sometimes vegetarian.[51] He has described Tony Blair as one of his political heroes.[52]
