‘Working on the Budget was an amazing and fun process’

WHEN PEOPLE think of the runup to a Chancellor’s Budget, they often imagine long dark nights of the soul at the Treasury and Number 10, shouting matches in wood-pannelled Whitehall offices and Cabinet Ministers making big and competing demands on national television.

When that Budget comes after the Prime Minister has spectacularly lost her majority at a snap election, after a surge from a party led by a left-wing socialist who wants to engage in a programme of renationalisation, those images tend to become even more stark.

Being in the Treasury in the weeks ahead of last November’s Budget, portrayed as Chancellor Philip Hammond’s last chance to save his job, was surely hellish?

Not so for Andrew Jones, who was Exchequer Secretary at the time.

“We had absolutely none of that, not at all,” he says.

“Firstly, all the Ministers got on fantastically well, it was a proper, really positive team spirit, so there was no hint of a raised voice or an angry tone or anything like that anywhere.

“We knew we were involved in a significant national event and were all working to make it the best we could make it.”

On meeting the Harrogate and Knaresborough MP, you can see how the pressure from the media and his own colleagues not to make a mistake may have felt like water off a duck’s back.

Friendly and chatty, Mr Jones is quick to crack a smile, and appeared to transfer his positive vibes to the Treasury at a time in which it appeared to be in turmoil from the outside.

“It was challenging, stimulating and great fun.

“I thoroughly enjoyed the process and it was an amazing experience.”

He is clear that he derived much of the enjoyment from the detailed and innovative work he put into efforts to prolong the North Sea oil and gas industry, while lifting the lid on the process.

“There is tons and tons of preparatory work which is really interesting, you get under the skin of lots of different sectors.

“A big area of the Budget was the North Sea, and I have no commercial ties with the oil and gas sector, but we managed to do a few really very positive measures to prolong the life of the North Sea – transferable tax history being the main one, which is a first across the world.

“That will enable greater longevity to existing North Sea assets.

“So being able to work upon something which is entirely new, get all the industry in to understand what their challenges are, and how we can create a framework to help them – that’s really how it should be working, it is government listening, acting and leading. It was fun.”

Mr Jones left his Treasury post in January to take up a role as the Conservative Party’s vice-chair for business engagement.

Months later, the firms he speaks to are likely to be asking Mr Jones to lobby the Chancellor not to put up their taxes.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s announcement of a £20bn funding boost for the NHS has been welcomed by the public – Mr Jones says it has been the dominant issue in his constituency postbag and seems to have “landed really, really well”.

But what may not have cut through to the public yet is that it will undoubtedly be accompanied by tax rises.

Throw in competing demands for spending across Whitehall, and Mr Jones admits Mr