The Right Honourable
Claire Coutinho
MP
Coutinho in 2023
Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
Assumed office
31 August 2023
Prime MinisterRishi Sunak
Preceded byGrant Shapps
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Families and Wellbeing
In office
28 October 2022 – 31 August 2023
Prime MinisterRishi Sunak
Preceded byKelly Tolhurst
Succeeded byDavid Johnston
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People, Health and Work
In office
21 September 2022 – 28 October 2022
Prime MinisterLiz Truss
Preceded byChloe Smith
Succeeded byTom Pursglove
Member of Parliament
for East Surrey
Assumed office
12 December 2019
Preceded bySam Gyimah
Majority24,040 (40.3%)
Personal details
Born
Claire Coryl Julia Coutinho

(1985-07-08) 8 July 1985
London, England
Political partyConservative
Alma materExeter College, Oxford
WebsiteOfficial website

Claire Coryl Julia Coutinho (born 8 July 1985) is a British politician and former investment banker who has served as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero since August 2023. A member of the Conservative Party, she has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for East Surrey since the 2019 general election. Prior to her current role, she served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Families and Wellbeing from October 2022 to August 2023 and as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Disabled People from September to October 2022.

Born in London, she attended James Allen's Girls' School, and studied mathematics and philosophy at Exeter College, Oxford. After graduating she worked for investment bank Merrill Lynch, conservative think tank Centre for Social Justice, industry group Housing and Finance Institute, accounting firm KPMG and as a special adviser in HM Treasury.

Early life and education

Claire Coryl Julia Coutinho was born on 8 July 1985 in London.[1][2] Her parents emigrated from India in the late 1970s and are of Goan Christian descent. Her late father Winston was an anaesthetist, and her mother Maria is a general practitioner.[3][4][5] Coutinho attended James Allen's Girls' School, a private day school in Dulwich,[6] before studying mathematics and philosophy at Exeter College, Oxford.[6][7]

Career

After graduating, she worked in the emerging markets equity team as an associate at the investment bank Merrill Lynch for nearly four years.[6][8] In 2012, Coutinho left the company,[9] and co-founded, with food writer Mina Holland, a literary-themed events company called The Novel Diner.[10][11][12] Two years later, she appeared on the cooking game show The Taste judged by Anthony Bourdain and Nigella Lawson.[3] The Novel Diner was dissolved in 2015.[13]

Coutinho worked at Iain Duncan Smith's centre-right think tank Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) between 2013 and 2015 and later became a programme director for the industry group Housing and Finance Institute created by Natalie Elphicke between 2015 and 2017.[8][14] In the former role, she focussed on financial inclusion, education, and regeneration policy.[15] After this, she worked for accounting firm KPMG as a Corporate Responsibility Manager between 2017 and 2018.[16]

Coutinho left the company to become a special adviser at HM Treasury. Initially she worked for Chief Whip Julian Smith,[17] and then became an aide to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Rishi Sunak.[18] Coutinho has commented that she left KPMG to join the government as a special adviser so that she could help deliver Brexit "from the inside", which she had supported in the 2016 EU membership referendum.[6]

Member of Parliament

Coutinho was selected as the Conservative candidate for East Surrey on 11 November 2019.[19] It is a safe Conservative constituency having elected a member of the party since 1918.[3] The seat had previously been held by former minister Sam Gyimah, who had the Conservative whip withdrawn after voting for the EU Withdrawal Act, an attempt to prevent a no-deal Brexit, and had subsequently joined the Liberal Democrats.[20] She was elected as MP in the 2019 general election with a majority of 24,040 (40.3%).[21]

In May 2020, she was criticised by several of her local constituents for supporting Dominic Cummings (then the PM's chief adviser) in taking a controversial 260 mile trip from London to County Durham during a national lockdown in the COVID-19 pandemic.[22] In June 2020, the windows of the East Surrey Conservative Association offices were graffitied with the words liars, cheats, traitors in black paint in an apparent protest.[23]

Coutinho was appointed as a Parliamentary Private Secretary at HM Treasury, and joined the advisory board of the centre-right think tank Onward in February 2020.[24][25] She was a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Policy Exchange in 2021.[26] Coutinho resigned from her position as PPS on 6 July 2022 in protest at Prime Minister Boris Johnson's leadership following the Chris Pincher scandal,[27] and endorsed Sunak in the July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election.[28]

Coutinho served as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Disabled People between September and October 2022 and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Families and Wellbeing between October 2022 and August 2023.[29][30] She wrote to Mayor of London Sadiq Khan in February 2023 to voice her opposition to the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone in the city.[31] The government signed a £19.5 million contract with consultancy Newton Europe in June 2022 to design and develop its DBV programme which aimed to reduce budget deficits in the education of children with special educational needs and disabilities with a target of at least 20% cut in new education provision. In May 2023, Coutinho stated to the Education Select Committee that there were no targets.[32]

In August 2023, Coutinho wrote to social landlords, housing associations and developers calling on them to let childminders work from rented properties. She commented that restrictive clauses in their contracts may stop them working from their homes.[33]

Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero

On 31 August 2023, Coutinho was appointed as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, replacing Grant Shapps; she was the first of the MPs elected in 2019 to join the Cabinet, and at 38 is the youngest member.[13]

In a speech at the 2023 Conservative Party Conference, Coutinho claimed that the Labour Party supported the introduction of a meat tax. Factchecking charity Full Fact found no evidence of this. When pressed by Sky News journalist Sophy Ridge on her comments, she said that it was only a light-hearted moment in her speech and provided no evidence for her assertion.[34]

Coutinho has been characterised as an "ardent Brexiteer" and a factional ally of Rishi Sunak.[35][36]

Honours

References

  1. ↑ "Members Sworn". UK Parliament. 18 December 2019. Archived from the original on 19 December 2019. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
  2. ↑ Brunskill, Ian (19 March 2020). The Times guide to the House of Commons 2019 : the definitive record of Britain's historic 2019 General Election. p. 350. ISBN 978-0-00-839258-1. OCLC 1129682574.
  3. 1 2 3 Pandit, Shiladitya (15 December 2019). "After UK polls, Pune family gets its first MP from East Surrey". Times of India. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  4. ↑ "Maria Julia Coutinho". General Medical Council. Archived from the original on 5 February 2020. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  5. ↑ "Winston Basil Aquino Coutinho". General Medical Council. Archived from the original on 5 February 2020. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Bond, Daniel (16 December 2019). "Class of 2019: Meet the new MPs". Politics Home. Archived from the original on 17 December 2019. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  7. ↑ "Exeter Excelling" (PDF). Exeter College, Oxford. p. 11. Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 October 2017. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  8. 1 2 Carter, Gus (18 December 2019). "Ones to watch: The most promising new MPs of 2019". The Spectator. Archived from the original on 9 January 2020. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  9. ↑ Huckle, Matt (22 October 2012). "Escape Artist". Square Mile. p. 30. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  10. ↑ "The Novel Diner Limited". Companies House. Archived from the original on 5 February 2020. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  11. ↑ Audley, Alice (20 March 2013). "The Novel Diner does The Bell Jar". The Upcoming. Archived from the original on 5 February 2020. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  12. ↑ "Save 7 December for the Novel Diner's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-themed Supperclub". Litro. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  13. 1 2 "Claire Coutinho: Who is the new energy secretary?". BBC News. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  14. ↑ Cooper, Keith (8 January 2016). "Coaching for councils". Inside Housing. Archived from the original on 5 February 2020. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  15. ↑ Fisher, Lucy; Gross, Anna (31 August 2023). "'The most loyal': Tory rising star Claire Coutinho enters UK cabinet". Financial Times. Retrieved 9 September 2023.
  16. ↑ "Claire Coutinho". LinkedIn. Retrieved 9 September 2023.
  17. ↑ "Annual Report on Special Advisers, 2018" (PDF). UK Parliament. p. 10. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 July 2019. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  18. ↑ "Annual Report on Special Advisers 2019" (PDF). UK Parliament. p. 13. Archived (PDF) from the original on 10 January 2020. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  19. ↑ "New Conservative Candidate chosen for East Surrey". East Surrey Conservatives. 11 November 2019. Archived from the original on 5 February 2020. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  20. ↑ "East Surrey stays Tory after Brexit row MP turns Lib Dem". BBC News. 13 December 2019. Archived from the original on 20 December 2019. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  21. ↑ "Surrey East". Election 2019. BBC News. 13 December 2019. Archived from the original on 13 April 2019. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  22. ↑ Pengelly, Emma (26 May 2020). "Surrey MPs face backlash for supporting Dominic Cummings after Downing Street press conference". SurreyLive. Reach. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
  23. ↑ Pengelly, Emma (4 June 2020). "East Surrey Conservatives' office vandalised with the words 'traitors, liars, cheats'". SurreyLive. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
  24. ↑ @ClaireCoutinho (2 March 2020). "Last week I was delighted to be appointed as a PPS to @hmtreasury, I look forward to working with the excellent team there. AND for getting the keys to our new home in East Surrey! Big week" (Tweet). Retrieved 11 March 2020 – via Twitter.
  25. ↑ Blanchard, Jack (17 February 2020). "Politico London Playbook: Baptism of fire — A touch of Frost — Super-forecasters". Politico Europe. Retrieved 11 March 2020.
  26. ↑ "The New Anglo-Indian Dialogue: Global Challenges and Tech Power in the 2020s". Policy Exchange. 20 April 2021. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
  27. ↑ "Three more British lawmakers resign from PM Johnson's government". Reuters. 6 July 2022. Retrieved 6 July 2022.
  28. ↑ "Who's backing who? Raab backs Rishi". The Spectator. 12 July 2022. Retrieved 12 July 2022.
  29. ↑ "Claire Coutinho MP". gov.uk. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  30. ↑ "Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work)". gov.uk. Retrieved 3 September 2023.
  31. ↑ "Claire writes to Sadiq Khan on ULEZ with Tandridge Councillors". Claire Coutinho. 3 February 2023. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  32. ↑ Jayanetti, Chaminda (10 September 2023). "Revealed: covert deal to cut help for pupils in England with special needs". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
  33. ↑ Clarence-Smith, Louisa (21 August 2023). "Minister calls on landlords to let tenants use homes to run childminding businesses". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  34. ↑ Asl, Nasim (3 October 2023). "No evidence for energy secretary's claim that Labour is 'relaxed' about taxing meat". Full Fact.
  35. ↑ "Claire Coutinho, new UK energy secretary, has distinct shades of green". Politico. 31 August 2023. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  36. ↑ Stewart, Heather (1 September 2023). "Claire Coutinho: Sunak loyalist will walk a fine green line as energy secretary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
  37. ↑ "Orders for 15 September 2023" (PDF). Privy Council Office. Retrieved 18 September 2023.
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