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The government is not doing enough to deliver on the public’s priorities and has become “addicted to making announcements,” the chief secretary to the prime minister has said.
Darren Jones told MPs Labour needed to focus more on delivery and less on coming up with new policy initiatives to fill the daily media “grid”.
Sir Keir Starmer appointed Jones to the newly-created role of chief secretary, with the job of enforcing policy delivery across government, in September as part of the latest shake-up of his Downing Street operation.
Jones, who also heads the Cabinet Office, told MPs the centre of government was not operating effectively and “it needs to change”.
“We need to make sure the whole muscle of government is focused on the public’s priorities,” he told MPs on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee.
When asked what the public’s priorities are, the Labour MP said: “People want to feel better off at the end of this parliament than at the start of it.”
He added that improvements to public services, and the NHS in particular, were also a priority, and that the public also “want to feel pride in their country, whether that’s in relation to communities or security of our borders”.
He said the ministers and civil servants tasked with delivering these priorities had to act more quickly and stop being so focused on strategy and reviews.
“We are not focused enough on outcomes,” he told the committee.
He also said the government was not doing a good enough job of communicating what it had achieved, with too much focus on the “grid” – the daily schedule of new initiatives to be announced to the broadcast media and newspapers.
“The system has become addicted to announcements.
“Just because there is a grid doesn’t mean we have to announce something else on a Tuesday just because it’s a Tuesday,” he told the committee.
The government is already attempting to get its message out on social media, with the launch of Keir Starmer’s TikTok channel, among other things.
And Jones suggested there would be a fresh push in the new year “to become more creative and more interesting” on social platforms rather than “just giving a press release to a newspaper in Westminster”.
“We are completely losing the war at the moment in the new media landscape, to be able to prove to people that it is government intervention that is making a positive difference in their lives,” he said.
The government has faced a succession of embarrassing episodes in recent weeks, including briefings about a plot to take over the leadership by Health Secretary Wes Streeting – something firmly denied by Streeting himself.
The run-up to last month’s Budget also saw a series of leaks and briefings.
Jones said he was “not responsible” for what goes on in every government department – but he was committed to enforcing a crackdown on unauthorised briefings, as signalled by Sir Keir Starmer on Monday.
“Can I stop politicians or political advisers chatting? No,” he told the committee.
“Would I encourage them to do it less? Yes.”
He added that Sir Keir’s desire to stop leaks was “clear” and “if anyone decides to go against that there will be consequences for it”.
Jones has also been put in charge of implementing the government’s plans for digital ID.
He told the committee he did not know how much the scheme would cost because the final scope of it – and how it would be delivered – had not been decided.
He cast doubt on the Office for Budget Responsibility’s estimate that digital ID scheme would cost £1.8bn – but said the final figure would be announced next year following a public consultation.
He insisted it would be a “genuine consultation” – taking into account both the technical specifications of any scheme and broader concerns about security and privacy.
But he refused to be drawn on what would happen if the consultation exercise found that the public did not want the scheme at all.
