YouSaid · the spoken record

Darren Jones

lines on the record: 58
first: 2024-11-08
most recent: 2024-11-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I drove the, you couldn't park your car under Big Ben if you're an MP. And I came in on a Sunday night but didn't have my pass. I was wearing a hoodie. I was a new MP. I hadn't got the pass for the car. And they were a bit nervous. But in the end, it was all okay.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I doubt I'm going to be joining them in that list of chief secretaries who become Prime Minister in a few years. That's very, very unlikely indeed.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You'll have to ask David Lamy that question, but we've all said things in the past that maybe we regret. The important thing is how we build on that relationship going forward.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To those people. It's not a lecture from a politician to a voter, it's being in the same place as a voter, which is why at every opportunity I get, I am out of the Treasury visiting a hospital, visiting a school, talking to people around the country to really understand the consequences of my decisions.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think there are two things, and these are both very personal to me because these are kind of my own ambitions. I said earlier I want to be one of the best reforming politicians of my generation and I want all of my colleagues to be in that category. But that has to be felt and be tangible to people. You can't just point to an OBR graph and say, isn't everything great? People need to feel they've got more pounds in their pocket they're able to pay the bills. They've got opportunity in this country. And you must always be focused on those outcomes and be really connected to people and their experience of the country. You can't just stay in the Treasury office and hope everything will be fine because the spreadsheets look good. And the second thing, and this is always a test that I set for myself, is that as politicians, we've always got to be better communicators. We're not just administrators, we are leaders. We have to be able to explain to people the decisions we're taking, the trade-offs, and where we're going as a country. And that has to be rooted in remaining connected.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, there's a lot of pragmatic rationale around all of this. I mean, the negotiations started to improve the trading arrangements for the EU. We've got to get on with that with the new commission.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I doubt that, but say 10 years' time do I want to say, hey, I was a politician, or do I want to say look at how we change the country? For me it is absolutely the latter. I don't want to be a politician for politicians' sake, and I want to use every minute of the day that I have to be able to look back in 10 years and to be able to point out how the country has improved as a consequence, not just of my work, but of the Labour Party's work in government”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it's the reality of my day job. But to answer the personal question, do I, in 10 years' time, when, let's be frank, I probably won't be a politician anymore.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, the Prime Minister has been very clear about the mandate of this government. You take that formula. I bet you don't talk to your children.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think get some entrepreneurs in. We've had very positive feedback from tech entrepreneurs, for example, the creative industries are being supported. The key thing there that you've mentioned, though, Nick, is that we think there is a role for government in enabling growth. The Conservatives didn't, which is why they cut investment and we've increased investment. You can talk to different sectors of the economy, whether it's on broadband or energy or, as I say, building houses and transport in cities so that workers can actually work where the businesses want to be, as well as getting the NHS back on its feet. So all these people are at home sick who need to get back to work can actually be seen and returned to work. That's the answer that we're putting forward.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Billion pounds of extra funding in infrastructure over the next five years, five-year spending settlements on capital with a 10-year infrastructure strategy, higher levels of spending on research and development than we've had in the past, more investment in skills, more funding for further education and apprenticeships, unlocking enabling infrastructure on rail, on housing, on energy. There's tons of announcements here, breakfast clubs for working parents at schools, changing the carers allowance, so carers can work more hours. Get Britain back to working plan. The thing with growth is that it's a puzzle. There are lots of different pieces in the puzzle that you've got to get right. And it is the 1st of most defining mission of this government because on public spending, you can only put more money into public spending if you grow the economy. We can't do further tax rises in this parliament.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Been in office for a few months, but this question is going to be a defining feature of the second phase of the spending review in the years ahead.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Public expenditure, how much more each and every year are you going to pay on top of what you're already paying? We're already spending £1.2 trillion a year. Like the big question is, how do you spend that money better?”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they do add up, but the challenge I put back to those commentators is they assume Focus my comments on that they assume no improvement in the delivery of public services. So they just assume you have to keep paying more and more each year for kind of failed public service delivery. That is not acceptable. That's why reform is so important. And what they look at when they look at these numbers is they look at the rate of growth.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and we are going to have to be tough, and we are tough about it. And look, the first couple of months coming into government was largely dealing with the mess that we'd inherited. We needed to get workers off the picket line back into work. We needed to deal with the spending black holes. We needed to do all those things. This budget is the kind of starting gun for delivering the change that we came into government to do. And whether it's on rail reform with GB Rail or reform of public services, there's a”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, there's reform built into those numbers because they would have liked more, to be frank. And so what we're asking them to deliver for that money does require them to improve their productivity and how they deliver services. But remember, the spending settlement of the budget was only for one financial year, 25-26. My job now that the budget's been set and we've got how much money we've got to spend over the next few years agreed with the Chancellor, this second phase of the spending review that I run now until the spring 2025 is when we make those multi-year decisions for public services.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, we spend about £1.2 trillion a year as a country. It's a lot of money. And the two, as I said, the two watchwords of this government, growth, which you hear us talk a lot about because that's the way in which you get more money into public services without having to tax people higher rates of tax. But reform is also the big watchword of this government because we have got to take this opportunity to get a grip of how that money is being spent to deliver better outcomes for people.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I didn't rehearse the questions. The only question I did rehearse was the PO one. Are you a shameless criminal question? That's the first time when I took a slightly different approach to my questioning style. But all of the other hearings were just developed as we went through the questioning. The art, though, was to make sure that you were calling the right witnesses at the right time and asking the right questions to try and have the best impact. And I think that's why they cut through because those were the right decisions for the time.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Important that I did that in a way that was tough but also made people have pride in their parliament in being able to do that job for them. And it is rooted in my personal politics about feeling disempowered growing up and knowing what it means when you do not have the ability or the authority or the power to hold powerful people to account when they are not behaving in the right way.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, the thing that gave me the most pride in sharing the select committee, you know, for example, in the Royal Mail dispute, working with postal workers and others, is that Select committees are a function of Parliament which is a function of the politicians that we elect as a public. Our job is to hold the powerful to account on behalf of the people. That is really important. And there's loads of stuff that we do every day that might not get through to the public, but these hearings where I was holding powerful people to account who had not behaved in the way they should have done an injustice to other people”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Taylor Swift tickets, I mean, without getting into the weeds of it, I mean, it was for me, I think I got the email like a day or two before. I'd not seen my kids very much in the election campaign. I thought it was a nice thing for them to do to spend some time with them, so did it and felt that that was broadly okay. But you are right. You have to be conscious as a politician that you need people to have faith in you and the way in which you're operating. And if that undermines it, then I would definitely think Thice about it in the future.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a distinction here between the kind of letter of the rules and the optics. And on the letter of the rules, for example the tickets that I took to go to the Premier League box to watch. There's no suggestion of any wrongdoing, but I equally recognize the optics that you're in quite a privileged position if you get invited to take your kids to watch a Taylor Swift concert in a box at Wembley. And so I understand why people's perception of politicians and politics probably drives them to a place where they get quite angry about that. And I think we've got to do a better job at communicating more broadly in politics, but specifically on this issue why we've made those decisions to, you know, in my case, accept those tickets.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can see that accusation and I can understand why some people might think that it's not an inverted snobbery. In fact, you know, I entirely recognise the effort that people put into starting and running a business, and that's what drives economic growth and drives opportunity for us as well as for themselves. Ultimately, the distinction ended up being rooted in the fact that you did have to make some decisions on tax. And what we said in the manifesto was about the majority of people, majority of people who go to work in a traditional job. And that meant you had to look elsewhere, which is why we ended up on employer national insurance contributions.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it really does. It really does. And I was always a bit confused as to why people got so kind of in knots about that. I mean, whenever I was asked, what's a working person? I'm like, it's a person that goes to work, that gets paid, and they've got to try and make ends meet.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's some photos. They're not books. So I have a number of photos in my office that will remind me why I'm doing what I'm doing. And so there's a photo that was taken as part of a newspaper interview of me at my old council flat, which, as I say, is now in my constituency. This photo of my kids, because I care about things like climate change and what we're doing in the world. And then a photo of me and my wife for every election on polling day that I've been successful in because I'm very conscious of the sacrifice that she and my family make for me to be able to do the job that I do.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't have them as a kid, and I think they're really important. But yes, it wasn't because my parents talked about politics. I just remember seeing it on the TV and I remember them being really happy about it and then experiencing the change that came.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And my wife will often laugh at me because it ends up being a bit of a neuroses. But having table and chairs to eat at, having books in the house, these are the things that I kind of overcompensate for now with my kids.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Completely changed my life and my opportunities in life. And I always thought that if I had the chance to do that for other people, for kids like me from backgrounds like mine, that would be a good thing to do.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I said, Tony, I mean, Tony Blair's government is the root of my interest in politics because I didn't come from a political family. My parents aren't involved in party politics. I didn't know anybody involved in politics. It seemed a very distant thing to me growing up. But the 1997 election, I remember. I remember how positive my parents were and my family. I remember the huge impact the national minimum wage had on us. I remember being told at my school, which was at that time one of the worst performing state schools in the country, that this gifted and talented program that the government funded meant that I was given extra opportunities. And it just stayed with me that the things that these guys on the TV did, these politicians,”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the time. I am an authentic Bristolian, but if I try to sound Bristolian, it doesn't go very well. Oh, God, give us a go. No, I'm not going to. I'm not going to. I'll offend some farmers in Somerset for sounding like that, I think, as opposed to Bristol. A bit like Barack Obama had to show his birth certificate to prove he was born in Hawaii. I can show you mine. I'm authentically Bristolian. I'm very proud to be from my constituency and to represent it in the House of Commons. Look, through the years, university law, politics, maybe I've won off the kind of accent edges.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I saw it Now I saw it. I saw it, and that had a huge impact on me, partly because you feel powerless living in those circumstances. And so it drives a lot of my labor values about opportunity and power for people, giving them the choice over their own lives about what they want to do.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that was. But also for them We never really had holidays. I mean, the holidays we had as a kid were the, remember the sun newspaper used to do the £10 holiday if you collected the vouchers and you go to somewhere like, I think it was like Perrin Porth or something. So we used to do those, that was in the days after the National Minimum Wage. But in the days before the national minimum wage, yeah, I mean, you know, there would be times when my parents would choose not to eat in order to feed me. couldn't have all the things we wanted to have.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think I'd say tough. I mean, I come from a working class background. I grew up in a council flat in my now constituency in the days before the national minimum wage. And that was difficult, but I had loving parents. I had a roof over my head. I had a great community. I had the great thing with living in flats is you've got friends on every floor. We had great green outdoor spaces. So it was difficult from a kind of poverty perspective, but I wouldn't say it was tough. I had an enjoyable kind of childhood.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and look, maybe it's a reflection of what I've had to do in my life to get to where I am. I mean, you've just got to be really clear about what you're doing and how you're going to do it. And, you know, now in my job, if you've got to deliver difficult messages or bring people with you, you just got to get on with it, basically.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, but I should really confess because we're all sinners, aren't we? I mean, I'm a pretty relaxed vegan. I did take that very hardline view in 2014, but in a confession to, I think it was the Observer Food Monthly magazine many years ago, I'm also very happy to be vegetarian. It was basically a decision around the climate emissions associated with food production. Sure, but most.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two and three. Yes, but because I didn't want to talk about them by their names in public. It's quite a revealing language, Coffee.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, when your direct debits change, you've got to update the spreadsheets so all the numbers flow through to the bottom. You know how much money you can save and how much disposable income you've got for the true...”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, look, you should get her on. I mean, actually, I think Lucy pointed out when I was first appointed that maybe I've got the best type of personality to be Chief Secretary to the Treasury, which was a polite way of putting it, I think.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I miss Mass. I mean, it's mad. So there's a whole room for improvement there about how we better use technology and data.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I write a letter to a Secretary of State, they respond with a letter in an Excel spreadsheet, and then you have lots of officials analyzing the spreadsheets and writing advice notes for me.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you have this scorecard, which I think is what Jeremy Hunt was referring to, which is the very limited circulation fancy Excel spreadsheet, which covers everything around tax and debt and cost of debt and fiscal rules and the whole shebang. And that's the big strategic picture that the Chancellor looks at and we contribute to. But then in my job, you have these very large kind of A3 printouts looking at what we call trade-offs, or we talk a lot about the marginal pound between departments. What can you buy for that pound? And if you pick a, that means you can't do B, are you really happy with that? But I was surprised how analog the process still is. One of the changes that I'm making to the spending review process is to digitize it. just so that we can actually use data much more effectively and make better strategic decisions.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they did make that decision because what they actually did is they cut capital budgets investment in order to plug holes in day-to-day spending. And that's why we talked about this budget as being a budget where we decided to invest as opposed to a follow-up path of further.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, reform has to be baked in, and everyone's got to do it. Now, some of this stuff, this is something I work on in particular, is not particularly newsy, but how we use technology to just improve day-to-day administration and productivity and public services will release tens of billions of pounds that can then be spent on other priorities for people.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's not so much no. I mean, let's be honest, a lot of the time it is no, but it's not really about saying no. It's about saying how do we achieve better outcomes for people whilst balancing the books? And look, there's a big task for me as Chief Secretary, but also for all of my colleagues. We need to be the best reformers of our generation. We have to have that zeal and drive every day to make sure that every pound is being spent well and we really drive the system and improve the country to deliver better outcomes for people.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No one knows what it means Well, sometimes, but also yes to the right questions. Yeah, the Chief Secretary is the deputy to the Chancellor and was created in order to help kind of settle all of the public spending decisions. So loosely the Chancellor will decide how much money we have to spend as a country and how they will raise it. And it's my job working with her and our colleagues around the Cabinet Table to decide how we dish that out to fund the government's but most of the time.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, look, you know, I have a pastor swan in and out of Downing Street. That's crazy. When I was first appointed by the Prime Minister, you often go off to Buckingham Palace to see the king to join the Privy Council. You're making decisions often every half an hour about hundreds of millions, billions of pounds that affect people's lives and their communities directly. And that's not normal. And you have to remember when you're doing that, that you mustn't become institutionalized or kind of used to or expecting that because you're just holding an office for a period of time.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, it's a bit of a whirlwind, and you just have to kind of roll with it. But it's certainly been fast-paced since we've come into government. And again, look, I'm enormously grateful to the people I've worked with.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, look, all politicians come and go, right? We're only here for a certain period of time, depending on how long we get given to serve. And you want to help improve the world and the country and people's lives and make a difference. But you have to recognize that I think it was Nancy Astor that said politicians are like ships on the horizon one minute you see them the next you don't and I think we all have to have some humility about that”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I suppose. I mean, look, I've wanted to be a politician for a long time. It's a huge kind of honour and public service and a great responsibility. A lot of the time in politics, though, there are lots of great people that want to become politicians. Often it's a bit of luck, as well as your skill or ability. And I'm an ambitious kind of guy. I want to do well in this job. But equally, politics to me isn't my whole life's purpose. And so I enjoyed my job, you know, working in the private sector as a lawyer. I enjoy other things in life as well. So at points where, you know, politics wasn't really going in my favor. Of course, I thought maybe I would focus on other things.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Got a few doors. I mean, Sherris, an icon, of course, but I was very focused on the need to try to win that election campaign. But evidently a few extra leaflets wouldn't have done the job.”
2024-11-08 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Darren Jones One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source