Election 2024: Labour ‘very confident’ in ‘robust’ growth plan, Darren Jones says

Labour is “very confident” it will be able to grow the UK’s economy, if elected, Darren Jones has pledged.

The shadow chief secretary to the Treasury said that while the party was not promising “a silver bullet”, when it came to securing growth, he vowed: “We’re 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 early months of the year saw economists cheered after we exited a narrow recession during the last months of 2023.

Speaking to City A.M. 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’ve been working with investors, business leaders, trade unions, and others, to try to understand what was preventing growth in the economy.”

He said the party was “repeatedly” told it wasn’t 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” due to a lack of infrastructure delivery, as well as highlighting “a lack of investment in training and skills”.

The Bristol North West candidate said: “We distilled that down into three offers which are stability, investment reform – so political and economic stability – and policy stability, which we’ve set out in our manifesto.

“Investment is going to be a key measure, how we unlock private sector investment, and we think we’ve got lots of opportunities to do that.

“We know that on planning for example, there’s lots that we can do that would unlock the investment that we then need to drive economic growth and job creation across the country. 

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

Pushed on whether Labour had a ‘plan B’ up its sleeve for if growth failed to materialise, Jones insisted again he was “confident that it will” – but didn’t commit himself to 100 per cent. 

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

“So we’ll reform the planning system and then we’ll expect investors to invest in infrastructure priorities in the way they say they want to in the UK creating the jobs.”

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

Jones spoke to staff and students at the further education college amid Labour unveiling more detail on its industrial strategy, which the party has previously said will include 10-year funding settlements 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, defence, energy and life sciences.

The party has said they would commit to tying these to a percentage of GDP, but has not yet set out how much the settlements will be, or what the size of the GDP commitment would be.

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

But asked why they weren’t using Boris Johnson’s phrase ‘levelling up’, Jones said: “The slogan is a slogan, right. So I’m not that interested in it.

“It’s all about embedding missions into the broader economy, and then really driving outcomes as opposed to worrying too much about what we named things.”