Darren Jones defends digital ID tweet and calls for tighter AI regulation

Sacking and first interview

Darren Jones has used his first TV interview since leaving government to defend his criticism of Andy Burnham's digital ID funding plans, and in a separate interview he called for tighter regulation of artificial intelligence.

Mr Jones, a former chief secretary to the Treasury and then chief secretary to the Prime Minister under Keir Starmer, was not appointed to Andy Burnham's government. He said he knew in advance that he would not get a job and that the call came from Mr Burnham on the Monday he became Prime Minister. He rejected the word 'fired', saying: 'I wasn't fired from the government. I was not appointed to the new one is the way I like to describe it.'

Digital ID and the tweet

Mr Jones also addressed the tweet he posted the morning after Mr Burnham moved into Number 10. He wrote that cutting VAT on electricity bills was good news, but added that the digital ID programme was unfunded and the government would have to set out how it would pay for its new policies at the Budget. He said that as a backbench MP it was his job to hold the executive to account, though he accepted the tweet was controversial. He said he had since been into Number 10 and spoken to the prime minister's team frequently. He said he would not be the government's chief critic and that economic credibility mattered for Labour's chances of a second term.

Pressed on the digital ID scheme, which he had been responsible for, Mr Jones said a business case was being prepared. He said the scheme was not in the manifesto, was announced after the spending review and was not budgeted for. It would have gone to the autumn Budget for a funding decision. When the interviewer suggested he had not worked out how it would be paid for, he replied that he had not pretended otherwise and that officials were working on the business case.

Budget and fiscal headroom

On the Budget, Mr Jones said the chancellor had lost half his fiscal headroom and would have to make balancing decisions between spending, headroom and any revenue raising. He said he did not think the government would break manifesto commitments, but there could be tweaks in response to the conflict in Iran, which had affected government borrowing costs.

AI regulation

In a separate interview focused on AI, Mr Jones said he had spent the summer with his children and had returned to parliament to talk about artificial intelligence. He said he had been raising the issue since 2017 and now wanted tighter regulation. He drew a distinction between safe AI, which can help with shopping, forms, work and public services, and unsafe AI, where systems act without human oversight or are used by bad actors for biological weapons or viruses. He said warnings from industry about loss of control were credible enough to check, and cited reports that advanced AI systems had been used in attempts to create biological weapons and that OpenAI technology was involved in the Hugging Face incident. But he warned against overreacting, saying he did not want to ban AI or damage the UK's economic growth, noting that AI companies drove most of the UK's growth in the last quarter. He said the risk was not that humanity would be wiped out next Wednesday, but that loss of control or misuse by bad actors warranted intervention.