Darren Jones has spent much of the past few months doing the traditional, hard-nosed job of a Treasury chief secretary – fighting line-by-line budget battles with ministers. But with last month’s fraught spending review over, he has turned his attention to an issue closer to his heart for his latest policy.
“The council estate I grew up on was one of the neighbourhoods that was picked by the New Labour government because it was so deprived, essentially, in terms of income and educational outcomes,” he says.
