Aged only 24, he stood as Conservative candidate for Kirkcaldy in the October 1974 general election, losing to the incumbent Labour MP Harry Gourlay.
Jones became a marketing executive at Tay Textiles in Dundee, and returned to England to become Head of Research at the National House Building Council from 1976 to 1978.
He was a member of Chiltern District Council from 1979 to 1983, and contested Stockton-on-Tees in the 1979 general election: the safe Labour seat was retained by the sitting MP Bill Rodgers.
Strong support for the SDP pushed the Labour candidate, Paul Boateng, into third place allowing Jones to win comfortably.
Jones was a proponent of the free market, associated with the Adam Smith Institute and a member of the No Turning Back group, but he called for steps to address pollution as early as 1984.
After leaving Parliament, Jones joined Redrow plc, a FTSE 250 listed construction firm, as a non-executive director in 1997, serving as its chairman from 2000 to March 2007.