Who is Claire Coutinho? Rising star of Tory party becomes energy secretary

Tory MP Claire Coutinho has been appointed the new energy security and net zero secretary, replacing veteran cabinet minister Grant Shapps in one of the top jobs of government.

It is a significant promotion for the East Surrey MP who was only elected to parliament in December 2019.

The 38-year-old held her previous junior role as children’s minister for less than a year but is a long-term ally of Rishi Sunak.

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She served as an adviser to the prime minister before entering the Commons, when he was chief secretary to the Treasury, and backed his bid to become leader when Boris Johnson resigned.

Ms Coutinho is the first member of the large 2019 intake of Tory MPs to make it to the cabinet table.

While she may not be well known to the wider public, her promotion will not have come as a surprise to her colleagues.

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Widely seen as a rising star of the Tory party, Ms Coutinho has a similar background to Mr Sunak.

The daughter of doctors from India, she was educated at the fee-paying James Allen’s Girls’ School in Dulwich and went on to study at Oxford University, graduating with a master’s degree in maths and philosophy.

Ms Coutinho began her career at the Merrill Lynch investment bank before leaving the City and joining former party leader Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice.

She also spent time in the Treasury as a special adviser and, after being elected in 2019 in the safe seat of East Surrey, returned as a parliamentary private secretary (PPS) in March 2020.

Ms Coutinho remained in this role until July last year, when she joined the exodus from Mr Johnson’s government over his handling of the Chris Pincher affair.

She was a vocal supporter of Mr Sunak’s ill-fated leadership bid to replace Mr Johnson but still went on to to become minister for disabled people under victor Liz Truss.

She was given a ministerial job in the Department for Education a month later, when the Truss administration collapsed, and Mr Sunak became prime minister.

Ms Coutinho’s arrival into cabinet comes amid accusations that Mr Sunak and his ministers are rowing back on environmental commitments and net-zero aims, with critics hitting out at plans to grant new licences for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.

While critics of Mr Shapps, who is replacing Ben Wallace as defence secretary, have heralded his departure, it remains to be seen if she will bring any great change in policymaking.

She recently made clear her objection to the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone in London, joining other Tory MPs in calling it a policy “clearly rejected by the people” during this summer’s Uxbridge by-election, and labelling it a “tax on those who can least afford it”.

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