Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ plans for the economy will kick-start growth and get public finances on to sound footing, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has said.
Darren Jones told GB News: “If the UK had grown at the average rate of other wealthy countries over the past 14 years, this year alone we would have another £50billion of money to spend on public services.
“That's the consequence of the chaos that we've experienced with the Conservatives, the economy falling into recession or bumping along the bottom.
“The Chancellor will set out today strong immediate interventions to be able to kick-start growth in the economy., while setting out the direction of travel this Labour government will take with growth being our first and most important mission so that we can get the public finances back on to a sustainable footing.”
On the Government’s plans for housing, he said: “We've been working with private sector businesses and investors, including housing developers for a number of years in opposition. We know there's an appetite to invest in the country.
“And it's not just about housing. It's about investment in broader infrastructure, whether that's transport or energy and water, as well as the community services that we want to see across the country.
“But it's really important that growth is the focus, because the tax burden is too high on working people. As we said in the campaign, we want that to come down.
“And as you said, we made that promise in the campaign not to increase Income Tax, National Insurance, or VAT on working people in the course of this Parliament. We're going to honour that promise.”
Jones also said fixing the prison system was a priority: “We've inherited a broken prison system, the Prime Minister made that claim over the weekend, and he's right, and that's why my colleague, the Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, is looking at that issue this week.
“We've got to fix the immediate problems, but we've also got to fix the long-term problems. We can't have a criminal justice system and a prison system which is in this mess, which is the mess that we have inherited and it's going to be our responsibility to fix it.”
Jones dismissed a call from Tony Blair to introduce ID cards: “Tony Blair runs his own institute now, the Institute for Global Change, which puts forward policy proposals not just for the UK, but for many countries around the world.
“As with any think-tank, we look forward to reading and considering those policy proposals, but on ID cards to go to your question, the Home Secretary was very clear over the weekend that that is not the policy of this government. We will not be having ID cards and that's the position.”
Asked about immigration, he said: “We put forward our big ideas in the election in our manifesto, and that's the basis on which we were elected and we will now implement those policies. The Rwanda scheme was always an expensive gimmick that didn't actually deal with the issue at its root causes.
“The two things that we're going to do is, one, make sure that we're processing asylum applications more effectively and where asylum is not granted, making sure that people are returned to the country they came from, but also making sure with our security Border command that we are starting to tackle the criminal networks who put vulnerable people on small boats and put them across the channel in return for money which is illegal.
“Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, when he used to be the chief prosecutor, was able to work with partners across the world to tackle terror organised crime and he's been very clear that we can take the same approach to dealing with this issue, which is what our focus is going to be.”
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