Speeches by Coutinho.

“Yes!”

“Let me make this point to the hon. Gentleman. The average person on benefits in work is working 20 hours, sometimes less. Why should a family with kids who are not well off and are working 40, 50 or 60 hours a week be worse off than a family on benefits working far fewer hours? I quit a job in the City to go to work fo…”

“We can exchange quotes, but the hon. Gentleman might want to—[Interruption.] Let me respond. He can go and check the quotes of the most respected energy economist in the country, Sir Dieter Helm, who says that the Government’s plan is locking people into higher bills for longer. One of the fundamental problems we have …”

“Let us talk about that £150. If someone has a gas boiler, the figure is £130. I remind the Secretary of State that that is almost everybody in the country. Oh yes, and if they pay tax, the amount has not come off—it has just been moved from their energy bill to their tax bill. Most importantly, that amount does not eve…”

“We have a fundamental difference in belief. Labour Members believe the best way out of poverty is welfare; I think the best way is jobs and growth, but the Government are killing those things. The problem with the Labour party, as we can see from its policies, is that it clearly thinks the only answer to the cost of li…”

“I will come to what Martin Lewis says about the hon. Gentleman’s party’s policies in a second. Labour promised £300 off energy bills, but bills have gone up by £200 instead. Going by his own election promise, the Secretary of State owes the public a £500 cut. Why have those bills gone up? It is because of the costs int…”

“My right hon. Friend is right, and here is the problem: this Budget might have made the Back Benchers happy, but it is not the Budget that they promised at the election. Let me help them. To start with inflation, we left Labour with inflation back under control at 2%. That took difficult decisions, which needless to sa…”

“The hon. Member makes an impassioned case, but why did Government Members not make it at the election? Why did the Government remove the Whip from seven Labour MPs who voted against keeping the cap last year? Why did the Government make all Labour MPs vote to keep the cap, including the Secretary of State? That is the …”

“I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. Let us be clear: when this Secretary of State resumed office, he decided to impose the most punishing climate policies at home, because according to his argument, if we lead, others will follow. That is why we are the only country in the world to be shu…”

“But it is not the Government that are providing support; other households are doing so through their bills. The Minister should be honest about that. Even the chief executive of Ofgem has said that axing the carbon tax would bring down electricity prices. Our cheap power plan would cut people’s electricity bills by 20%…”

“At this COP, acres of the Amazon were chopped down so that the Secretary of State can lecture us about saving the planet. Can the Minister justify why his Government did not even put a single penny into the forest fund, which could have at least repaired some of the damage?”

“Does the Minister accept that 22 million households are seeing their bills go up to pay for this policy, which is a handout for 6 million households? Is that not like the Government’s promise to cut bills by £300 when actually, bills have gone up by £200 instead? Does he acknowledge that the best way to help families w…”

“It is no secret that I am a fan of new nuclear in this country, so I welcome the progress on SMRs. If we are to have a strong economy and a good standard of life, we need abundant, reliable and cheap energy. Nuclear works in the winter, can run 24/7 to power artificial intelligence, and is 100% clean to boot. It uses 3…”

“The hon. Gentleman just said that the costs of building more wind and solar farms had not fed through to bills. But if we look at Ofgem’s last price cap, we see that paying wind farms to turn off when it was too windy made bills more expensive. We have spent £1 billion on that this year; by 2030, we are projected to sp…”

“My hon. Friend is exactly right. These are political choices and the Government should reflect on them. When it comes to the North sea, we know that we will need oil and gas for decades to come—even the Climate Change Committee acknowledges that—yet thanks to the Government’s policies, we are paying Norway billions of …”

“It is not cheap!”

“I will make a bit more progress, because other Members want to get in. We heard a lot this morning about the different factions jostling to replace the Prime Minister, but I have an idea that they can all get behind. I say to the Blue Labour faction, “If you want to protect industry, you need cheaper electricity, so ba…”

“I will make a little more progress. The truth is that, with the winter fuel payment cut, the promise to cut bills by £300, shutting down the North sea and supposedly achieving clean power by 2030, their Secretary of State has told Government Members to back policy after policy that unravel as soon as they meet reality.…”

“The hon. Gentleman is shaking his head, but nothing I have said there is factually incorrect.”

“As the Chair of the Select Committee was happy to spend some time with me on this, I hope that the hon. Lady would be too, because she might learn something. Some 40% of our electricity prices are wholesale prices, while 60% are fixed costs, which covers things like building out the networks, which is going up phenomen…”