One of Bristol’s MPs has defended receiving VIP tickets to see Taylor Swift at Wembley last month, pointing out that there is a difference between getting a perk to treat his children and the Tory Party handing out ‘corrupt Covid contracts’ to their donors.
Darren Jones, the MP for Bristol North West, has been at the centre of national media attention at the Labour Party conference over donations and perks received by Labour MPs, after the latest publication of the declarations made by MPs of gifts and donations they’ve received.
Mr Jones, who is now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury – effectively the number two to Chancellor Rachel Reeves – acknowledged he accepted the gift of tickets to see the Taylor Swift Eras Tour concert at Wembley last month, and said he’d do it again.
He declared in the Register of Members’ Interests that the four tickets had been to the value of £3,400 and had been given as a gift by the Football Association – the FA owns and runs Wembley Stadium – on August 20.
Mr Jones posted a picture on X, formerly Twitter, on August 20 showing he, his wife and two children all wearing friendship bracelets – his spelled out the word ‘Dad’ – before the concert began, with the words ‘Hello, Wembley’, and the Eras Tour hashtag.
When quizzed about this evening out with his family, Mr Jones said he declared the gift in the proper way. “I did. I was offered them. I had not seen my children for the election period, I thought it was a nice treat for them, I confess I’m not really a Swiftie,” he said.
“I went in my suit as was well known. I took my kids to that, it was a nice treat for them and I declared it in a proper way. As you know from my declarations, that’s the main big donation that I took and I thought it was a nice thing to do for my children.
“It was an evening I had free when I had the kids in London and it was a nice thing for them to do,” he added.
Asked by BBC Politics Live if it ‘do it again’, he said he would. “In those circumstances, yes. I think what you have to be clear of is about the contrast between doing a nice thing for my kids where yes, I get a perk – I’m sure I was offered them because I’m a cabinet minister – but I declared it in the proper way,” he said.
“There’s a difference between that and when undercover journalists and leaks had to expose parties in Downing Street and corrupt Covid contracts for the donors of the Tory Party. This Labour Party has declared in line with the rules, transparently, any political donations we’ve received. They’ve explained how they’ve been spent. That is very, very different to the cover-ups we saw from the last Conservative Government.
ITV News also quizzed Mr Jones about the concert. “My declarations, you’ll see, I don’t think I’ve accepted very much at all. I did take my children to see Taylor Swift, which was more for them than it was for me,” he said. “I think everybody has to make consideration about what they can and can’t do in the time they have available with their families,” he added.
On the updated list of the Register of Members’ Financial Interest, Darren Jones’ Taylor Swift tickets comes alphabetically directly after Robert Jenrick, the frontrunner for the leadership of the Conservative Party.
In the space of less than a month, Mr Jenrick, the MP for Newark in Nottinghamshire, declared he’d received a total of £115,000 in cash from eight different donors, including £20,000 from multi-millionaire former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi’s family business, £10,000 from a Pontypridd property company, £25,000 from a London-based fitness tech company and tens of thousands more from five other private individuals.
In the same week as the MP’s Register of Interests was being scrutinised, the Electoral Commission published its records on donations to political parties, and revealed that a Cayman Islands-registered hedge fund called Quadrature Capital had donated £4 million to the Labour Party on May 28 – six weeks before the General Election, but late enough to only be revealed publicly in September.
Quadrature Capital has a diversified share portfolio worth £6 billion, including £170 million holdings in fossil field companies and tens of millions of pounds of shares in arms manufacturers.