‘There were a whole string of projects that were never funded’ says chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones

The chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones joined us from Westminster.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: We asked you all the way through the election campaign that you’d probably have to make cuts to spending and raise taxes. And sure enough, that’s what it’s looking like. Now, the precise reason might be slightly different, but it adds up to the same thing for the British people. Do you think the election campaign was honest?

Darren Jones: Yes, because the things that the chancellor set out today to the House of Commons are things that nobody but former Conservative ministers knew. There were a whole string of projects that were never funded, and yet Conservative ministers had the barefaced cheek to stand up, to promise these things to people across the country, knowing that the money was never there. And you might remember the press conference that we held during the election campaign with Jon Ashworth, who was part of our national campaign team, where he said the money is not there for the commitments they’ve made in their manifesto. We never expected that level of maladministration would be so negligent that there was no money for the projects they’d even announced in government, let alone for the things in that manifesto.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But you’re pinning it on ministers. The truth is, civil servants, the same civil servants who were responsible for this overspend, they were actually doing it and didn’t report it, are now telling you ‘There’s this massive overspend’. It’s not just Conservative ministers, is it? It’s the officials who were also running all these projects.

Darren Jones: Krishnan, come on. Civil servants advise ministers. Ministers decide, ministers are accountable. That is why I’m on your show this evening. Ministers would have been briefed in the same way that I and the chancellor have been briefed. They would have known about the trade-offs for their decisions.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But you called this a cover-up. So the question is, it can’t just be ministers who are covering it up because they weren’t the only people who knew.

Darren Jones: Ministers are the people who are responsible to parliament and to the public for the decisions that ministers take. Even the Office of Budget Responsibility confirmed today in a letter to the chancellor when she sat down, that they had not been told about the overspend in year, put into train by previous ministers from the last Conservative government. So you didn’t know, I didn’t know, the independent checks and balances in the system didn’t know. The only people who did know and who should be accountable for that are the Conservative ministers we’ve now booted out of office.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: The decisions you’re taking, though, today are really sweeping. If you’d have gone into that election saying ‘We now have no intention of implementing Andrew Dilnot’s cap on social care’, you’d have had a tough argument and you’re able to just do that now sweepingly. And that’s a terrible thing for the social care system now, isn’t it?

Darren Jones: The stark reality of the Dilnot reforms is that the previous lot in government hadn’t done the work to make sure they could even be implemented in the winter of this year when they were intended to…

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But you said you intended to do it.

Darren Jones: Operationally, they couldn’t have been implemented because they hadn’t done the work. Now look, Krishnan, I didn’t want to come into government and have to make this set of announcements at this stage. Nor did the chancellor. She was very clear about that today. But we are going to be honest with the British people about what the Conservatives left behind. And yes, we are going to make the tough decisions about fixing those foundations so that we can rebuild our country and the spending review and the budget. And in the years ahead of this Labour government, we have got to clear up their mess because this cannot continue. And the British people will know from our very clear commitments at the election that only Labour can be trusted with the economy.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But doesn’t this highlight something deeper about the sort of shallow nature of our politics at the moment? You made this pre-election pledge not to [raise] national insurance, income tax and VAT. When we look back at what happened in March, the then chancellor did a £20 billion national insurance cut. Surely that’s the sensible thing to reverse, because that’s basically the size of the black hole?

Darren Jones: You’re right that the former Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt must have known that he didn’t have enough money to pay all the bills whilst cutting taxes. We didn’t know that in opposition at the time. But what we do know in the Labour Party is we made that promise to the British people in the election not to increase income tax, national insurance, VAT…

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But it was a silly promise is my point now, wasn’t it?

Darren Jones: That’s your view. It’s a promise we made, it’s not going to be a promise that we will break, because we think it’s really important in politics that when you make these promises, you honour them. And that’s what we’re going to do, even if it makes our lives harder, quite frankly, by honouring that promise that we made.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Okay, I think about ten days before the election, I put to you, you are almost certainly going to be looking at capital gains tax, corporation tax, and I suppose inheritance tax as well we could add to that. And I’m not asking you to sort of tell us what’s in the budget, but that’s the honest thing, isn’t it? They are working people who pay all these taxes, they need to be thinking some combination of those is going to have to go up. That’s what we’re being warned today?

Darren Jones: We’re doing everything possible to make sure that we’re bearing down on these costs. We’ve highlighted the projects and the policies today that were never funded by the Conservatives, and been honest to people about the fact that they will not be funded going forward. We’ve made difficult decisions on, for example, the Dilnot reforms to social care, on winter fuel payments and on other policy areas to get down costs in year. But then we’re going to move to the budget and the spending review that I will run to start to face the future so that we can rebuild on the foundations that we’ve reset today and in the budget.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But having ruled out income tax, VAT and national insurance we’re left with those, aren’t we? We’re looking at capital gains, inheritance, pensions, tax relief, corporation tax. That’s what you’re left with.

Darren Jones: The budget will set out the full detail. But we are working really hard not just in advance of today, but over the coming months as we get towards the budget on 30 October, to make sure that we are taking inefficiencies out of the system. We’ve said that we want the consultancy budget to come down. The last government was spending an absolute fortune on digital content from Tory ministers on social media. We’re cutting that and we’re closing down the things that have not been funded properly. So we’re doing everything possible to get this nation’s finances under control. And at the budget we will set out, having closed that financial year 2024, 2025 at the budget and starting to face the future, how we will reset what we’ve inherited from the Conservatives and start to face the future with the change that Labour offered at this election that we are absolutely committed to delivering.