Speeches by Coutinho.

“The Secretary of State promised in the general election to cut everyone’s bills by £300 by 2030—a pledge he will not repeat now that he is in office. In fact, one of his first acts has been to snatch the same amount away from millions of pensioners in poverty. The right hon. Gentleman likes to preach, to politicise and…”

“Will the hon. Member give way?”

“I thank the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of his statement. While I welcome the news today, I am saddened, if not surprised, that he has not had the grace to acknowledge the work of the last Government in getting us to this place. I know that his opinion is not that of the many partners who have come t…”

“I beg to move an amendment to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question, and insert: “this House, while recognising the need to cut household energy bills for families, accelerate private investment in energy infrastructure, and protect and create jobs in the energy industry across the UK, declines to give a Sec…”

“I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. It is always a pleasure to see him in the Chamber making excellent points. The question that I have is this: why has the Secretary of State set up a duplicate programme with no instructions for governance, independent review, investment plans or consumer savings that h…”

“I will not; I will continue. Once again, we simply have no answers. I find all this very strange, because at our last encounter in this House, the Secretary of State was keen to confess that he was a “super-nerd”. As someone who has been a lifelong mathlete, I am the first person to want to champion a fellow super-nerd…”

“That is a very fair question. I hope that the energy Minister, who I assume will wrap up the debate, will be able to provide some detail. Far from being a super-nerd, the truth is that the Secretary of State is the ultimate career politician. He comes up with big titles and makes big promises to the public, but he has …”

“I will. This is a critical point, which I have made in recent weeks. The point about having longer to decarbonise is that it gives time to develop British supply chains. That is exactly what I was doing. The green industries growth accelerator and some of the other things that I have talked about gave us time to set up…”

“I will give way in a second. The Secretary of State is setting up a new body when our energy sector is not short of state-run bodies. We have Ofgem, the National Energy System Operator, the Climate Change Committee, Great British Nuclear and, of course, the UK Infrastructure Bank, with £22 billion to provide debt, equi…”

“I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I will come on to that point. There will be a vote next week on the winter fuel payment—I think the Government have confirmed that. Everybody heard the Secretary of State speak today, so I say to those on the Opposition Benches that, if they want to break the Whip, if they wa…”

“This is really important, because we are talking about taxpayers’ money. Those were small-time projects with budgets in the tens of millions, but the Secretary of State is asking for a budget of billions of pounds with no plans. He mentioned a couple of companies in his speech, including EDF, which made a loss of €17 b…”

“If the hon. Lady would bravely like to say that the company will generate energy, I am sure that she would like to tell us how much, because no one else seems able to.”

“I am sorry, but I will make some progress. Finally—this is really important—the Secretary of State pays lip service to nuclear, but we know that when Labour was last in power it did not start a single nuclear power plant in all its 14 years. All summer, there has been an eerie silence. On the capital raise for Sizewell…”

“I have enormous respect for the hon. Lady, but I disagree, particularly on nuclear, because every single operational nuclear power plant in this country was started by Conservatives. I will offer some suggestions for questions that Labour Members might like to ask. They like to say that renewables are cheap, and they a…”

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and may I say how wonderful it is to see you in the Chair? I warmly welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks) to his place on the Government Front Bench. I know that he used to be a schoolteacher, a wonderful p…”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman, but as I said, we have to look at the full system cost. He is very experienced in the energy sector, and he knows as well as I do that the flexible capacity that is used to back up an intermittent system is where the true costs lie. It is fair for Opposition Members to ask for an assessment …”

“I would like to put on the record my disappointment not to get the statement in good time. I know that the right hon. Gentleman will want to provide us with the same courtesy that we tried to provide him when we were in government. That being said, I congratulate him on his return to government. I was sad not to see mo…”