Darren Jones

Darren Paul Jones (born 13 November 1986) is a British politician who has served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations since September 2025, having previously served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from July 2024 to September 2025 and Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury from September 2023 to July 2024. A member of the Labour Party, he has been Member of Parliament for Bristol North West since 2017. He chaired the House of Commons Business and Trade Select Committee from 2020 to 2023.

Darren Jones was born on 13 November 1986 in Bristol, and grew up in Lawrence Weston. He attended Portway Community School in Shirehampton, a state comprehensive, and has spoken about his experiences of growing up in poverty.

Jones studied human bioscience at the University of Plymouth, where he was elected President of the Students' Union. He worked in the National Health Service and served on the boards of the University of Plymouth and the Plymouth NHS Trust, and had a weekly newspaper column in the Plymouth Herald. He later read law at the University of the West of England and the University of Law in Bristol before being admitted as a solicitor.

Jones initially worked at Womble Bond Dickinson LLP, before becoming an in-house counsel with BT, advising on data privacy, cyber-security, telecommunications and consumer law. In Bristol, he started a mentoring programme seeking to bring young people from his old school into the legal profession. Following the Brexit referendum in 2016, he sat on the board of UK Legal Futures, which brought together leading lawyers to advise politicians and civil servants on legal questions raised by Brexit.

Jones stood as the Labour candidate in Torridge and West Devon at the 2010 general election, coming fourth with 5.3% of the vote behind the incumbent Conservative MP Geoffrey Cox, the Liberal Democrat candidate, and the UKIP candidate. Jones later sat on the national youth committees of the Co-operative Party and Unite the Union and was elected to Unite's Regional Political Committee in the South West.

At the 2015 general election, Jones stood in Bristol North West, coming second with 34.4% of the vote behind the incumbent Conservative MP Charlotte Leslie. Following the 2015 election, Jones joined the campaign of Labour leadership hopeful Andy Burnham as its South West Co-ordinator, and chaired Marvin Rees's successful campaign to become Mayor of Bristol.

In 2016 he joined the Remain campaign in the EU membership referendum and chaired the Young Lawyers' Network, a nationwide group campaigning for a vote to remain in the European Union in the 2016 referendum. Later in 2016, he went to the United States to work for the Clinton campaign in Miami during that year's US Presidential election.

Jones was also the chair of Labour Digital, a Labour think tank.