Labor ‘very confident’ of ‘robust’ growth plan, says Darren Jones

Labor is “very confident” it will be able to grow Britain’s economy if elected, Darren Jones has promised.

The shadow chief secretary to the Treasury said that while the party did not promise “a silver bullet”, when it came to securing growth, he promised: “We are very confident.”

It comes after the UK economy – which has improved since the start of 2024 – stagnated in April, which the Office for National Statistics (ONS) linked to the wet weather.

However, quarterly growth in the first few months of the year had economists cheering after we exited a narrow recession in the final months of 2023.

Speaking to City AM during a visit to Harrow College, in north London, to discuss Labour’s skills agenda and industrial strategy, Jones said: “For a number of years now we have been working with investors, business leaders, unions and others, to try understand what was hindering growth in the economy.”

He said the party was “repeatedly” told it was not clear what the government’s focus was, with “ministers changing every five minutes, policy priorities changing every five minutes”.

Global investors, he said, say they see the UK as “too risky a place to invest” because of a lack of infrastructure delivery, as well as highlighting a “lack of investment in education and skills”.

The Bristol North West candidate said: “We distilled it down to three offers which are stability, investment reform – meaning political and economic stability – and political stability, which we have set out in our manifesto.

“Investment is going to be a key metric, how we unlock private sector investment, and we think we have a lot of opportunities to do that.

“We know that in terms of planning, for example, there is a lot we can do that would unlock the investment that we then need to drive economic growth and create jobs across the country.

“So it’s not a one day thing, it takes some time for this to come through the system. But we’re confident that we have a pretty robust plan based on years of gathering evidence from partners on how to stimulate that investment in growth.”

Pushed on whether Labor had a “plan B” up its sleeve for if growth didn’t materialise, Jones again insisted he was “certain it will” – but did not make a 100 per cent commitment.

“We were told that if we want to unlock investment in national priorities, we need to reform the planning system,” he said.

“So we will reform the planning system and then we expect investors to invest in infrastructure priorities in the way that they say they want to do in Britain that creates the jobs.”

He added: “I think if we were looking at the country, and we were sort of scrambling around for ideas, I would be less confident, but I’m confident because we’re not doing that – there’s a very clear agenda, around stimulating growth and very as the government can do to do so.

Jones spoke to staff and students at the Labour-centered further education college who revealed more details of its industrial strategy, which the party has previously said will include ten-year funding deals for research and development (R&D) institutions in a bid to create jobs.

Six areas have been identified for ten-year budgets, including aerospace, artificial intelligence, automotive, defense, energy and life sciences.

The party has said it would commit to tying these to a percentage of GDP, but has yet to set out how big the settlements will be, or what the size of the GDP commitment would be.

Labour’s industrial strategy plans come as part of wider messages about jobs and opportunities across the country.

But asked why they didn’t use Boris Johnson’s phrase to “raise the bar”, Jones said: “The slogan is a slogan, isn’t it. So I’m not too keen on that.

“It’s all about embedding missions into the broader economy and then really driving results rather than worrying too much about what we called things.”