Speeches by Coutinho.

“When we said that we could not support the Bill in its original form, it was because we had no detail to justify giving this Secretary of State a blank cheque for £8 billion of taxpayers’ money. In the intervening two months, I am afraid that we have not learned anything to give us confidence. We have not seen a busine…”

“I also thank the Minister for his work in Committee, but I am afraid we are not reassured. Labour Members have a clear opportunity to prove to their constituents that they will stick to the promises they made just a few months ago. They promised to cut energy bills by £300 and to create 650,000 jobs; if Labour Members …”

“One in four pupils in Surrey go to an independent school, including more than 4,000 pupils in my constituency, and many of those pupils have a special educational need. We have had an increasing rise in the diagnosis of conditions such as autism. The proposal is being pitched as a fundraising measure, but I do not thin…”

“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?”

“There we have it: no apology; no recognition that it is the right hon. Gentleman’s Government’s decisions that are going to leave pensioners in the cold this winter. He has to acknowledge this: from the trade unions to the CBI, from blue Labour to Blairites and from the left to the right of his party, people are soundi…”

“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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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…”