To mark the anniversary of Labour’s first year in UK Government since 2010, we have asked each Mission Champion for their assessment of the Government’s progress so far, and what is still to be done. The first in this series, by Dan Tomlinson MP, the Growth Mission Champion, is below.
For years I have had two professional obsessions: 1) The people of Chipping Barnet, and 2) making everyday Brits better off. Which is why 2024 was a big year – we took Chipping Barnet from the Conservatives for the first time ever, and I was appointed as the Government’s Growth Mission Champion.
As a National Mission Champion – a role that sadly doesn’t come with a medal or a trophy – I have had the chance to focus on the work the Government is doing to raise living standards by growing our economy.
Getting this right really matters. The collective failure of governments over the last 14 years to grow our economy has meant that families up and down the country are worse off and struggling with the crushing cost of living crisis. If wages had continued to grow at the same rate after the financial crisis as they did before it, then on average each worker in the UK would be £11,000 better off every single year. This is what deep economic failure looks like.
As Britain sank further and further into decline, it became clearer and clearer to Labour that the only long-term route out would be from faster economic growth for higher living standards. This is why it was the number one mission for the Prime Minister in the election campaign, and why it is central to the Government’s Plan for Change.
There are three key parts to the growth mission, and we have made progress on each of these this year.
First, stability. In Autumn last year, the Chancellor delivered something unseen by the Commons for 14 years – a sensible budget. A budget delivered by a Chancellor with her feet on the ground, a stark contrast to the economics of there cloud-cuckoo-land where countless Tory chancellors nested.
Rachel Reeves rightly prioritised spending on public service priorities, including the NHS and policing, and on setting fiscal rules which allowed a significant increase in borrowing for investment.
Yes, difficult choices, but the economics of Nigel Farage, who went to the Liz Truss School of Budgetary Economics, are for opposition parties – not for governments focused on managing public finances.
Now that Labour is running the economy, we’re generating results. We’ve seen encouraging movement with interest rates falling four times since the election. Wages have risen faster in the past ten months than they did in the first ten years of the Tory government.
Second, investment. It was great to go to the Government’s International Investment Summit in October, where £63bn of investment into the UK was pledged by top companies – exactly the kind of pro-growth action that will make people across the UK better off.
We’ve also unlocked £113bn extra public sector investment because we know that this is a vital driver of long-term growth. We’re spending billions on rail and we’re providing £15.6bn for mayors of some of England’s largest city regions, supporting them to invest in their local transport, including zero emission buses, trams and rail.
You may already know of my slight obsession with the Leeds tram (my thread on it here), so I was pleased to receive an answer from the Chancellor confirming the government’s full support for a West Yorkshire Mass Transit system. Leeds is the largest city in Western Europe without mass transit – it had a thriving tram network until the 1950s, then decades of failed attempts to rebuild it. Much like with our economy, Labour is taking the reins and righting the economic failures of the past.
This government is saying yes to major infrastructure projects: from advancing nuclear power projects to accelerating housing delivery and transport connections.
We must get Britain building again in so many ways. We haven’t built any reservoirs for 30 years – so this government is changing that. For example, two new reservoirs will be built in East Anglia and Lincolnshire, supplying water to over three quarters of a million homes in some of England’s most water-stressed regions. Joined-up, strategic thinking. A long-term economic plan that isn’t a slogan but a reality.
We’ve launched an Industrial Strategy developed in close partnership with business, marking a new era of collaboration to drive investment, unlock growth, and create over a million skilled, well-paid jobs.
Third, reform. With the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and the new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), we’re streamlining the planning process and turbocharging housing and infrastructure delivery. No more delays – only action and progress.
The landmark Planning Bill will tackle the regulatory stranglehold that has prevented us from building the homes, infrastructure, and energy projects our economy desperately needs.
This followed the changes to the NPPF, which the OBR projects will increase GDP by £6.8 billion by 20290-30, and boost tax revenues by half this amount. Demonstrating clearly that reforming planning is key to ripping the country out of the alleyway of economic decline it’s stuck in.
We’re reforming pensions and are starting to make progress on vital welfare reform. We have to make sure that people who need support get it and aren’t stuck in a failing system. That means extra investment in employment support to help people get into work, better employment rights so jobs themselves are better, but it also means redesigning both disability and incapacity benefits (PIP and UC) so that people don’t get trapped in a system that pushes them away from support.
Some have suggested that with the Planning and Infrastructure Bill through the Commons, and much of the economic reform plans either announced or happening, that the next 12 months can be a steady-as-she-goes year on growth. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
The public are still under pressure from a crippling cost of living crisis, and economic growth is still the best route we have to improving things in this country. Not only does it mean higher wages and lower inflation, but also it is the route by which we can bring in more tax revenue to make the difficult choices on public service and welfare spending less acute. We’ve got to double down in 2025-26, or we will regret it deeply.
I hope that in the next year we find a way to cut deeper into the thicket of planning rules that hold back the potential of our business, places, and family aspirations. We find ways to say yes, quickly, to the major infrastructure projects we have announced. And we keep hard at work in the Department for Work and Pension (DWP) to get economic inactivity down, and employment up.
And possibly more importantly, I hope the next 12 months see us find a way to lead a national conversation on how we can move on from a politics of scarcity to a politics of plenty – where rather than arguing about how to divide the pie, we’re pushing to grow it.
After the longest period of wage stagnation since the Napoleonic era, where eight million young adults have never really known what it felt like to work in an economy with rising prosperity, we owe it to every single person across this country to turn the tide.
If we get this right, it means far more than a stronger economy.
This is the promise of a more prosperous country: a Britain that’s not just getting by, but truly moving forward.
For more on how missions work see From Instruction to Innovation: Delivering Labour’s Five Missions in 2025.
