Claire Coutinho MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is, as ever, an expert on this issue. If we look at the price cap and why it went up recently, it is those hidden costs. It was the balancing costs, paying wind farms to turn off when it is too windy. Next year, the network costs are about £100 per family. He is absolutely right that we have to look at all the extra costs that are coming down the track.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House calls on the Government to introduce a plan for cheap power by cutting public expenditure to remove the ‘Carbon Tax’ (UK Emissions Trading Scheme) from electricity generation and end Renewable Obligation subsidies; notes that the UK has the highest industrial electricity prices in the world and the second highest domestic electricity prices; further notes that high power costs are holding back economic growth and making households poorer; believes that cheap energy is essential to enable economic growth, the expansion of the artificial intelligence sector and the electrification of heating and transport; further calls on the Government to stop the Allocation Round 7 auction, which will lock consumers into high energy bills for decades; also notes that three quarters of the UK’s energy needs are met by oil and gas, and recognises the vital contribution of the North Sea industry to the nation’s energy security, to skilled employment, and to the public finances through billions of pounds generated in tax revenue; notes that shutting down domestic oil and gas production would increase reliance on foreign imports with higher carbon emissions; and also calls on the Government to end the ban on new oil and gas licences and to scrap the Energy Profits Levy in order to maximise investment in that sector. Our cheap power plan would cut electricity bills for everyone by 20%, and under it, we take a common-sense approach to British energy security by backing the North sea. The plan recognises that the biggest problem the country faces is the cost of our electricity. It is a problem for living standards, for industry, for artificial intelligence and for electrification. The focus of any Government should be making electricity less expensive, not more expensive, as Labour’s plans will. They should be about making electricity cheap. Under our cheap power plan, we would axe the carbon tax—which has gone up by 70% this year under Labour, pushing up everybody’s energy bills—and scrap the renewable obligation subsidies, which result in some wind farms get three times the market price for electricity. I would like to start by thanking the Liberal Democrats, who came out this morning as backing the second part of our plan. I would also like to thank Reform, which appears to have copy and pasted the plan wholesale, and the Tony Blair Institute, which just two weeks ago said that we need to ditch Labour’s disastrous clean power plan in favour of a cheap power plan that takes off carbon taxes. That sounds familiar.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  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 back our cheap power plan.” I say to the Blairites, “If you want to make the most of AI, you need cheaper electricity, so back our cheap power plan.” I say to the soft left, “If you care about lifting people out of poverty and improving living standards, then back our cheap power plan.” Our plan will not just help 6 million households by jacking up the bills for 22 million, which is what the Government are doing—it is what the Minister will no doubt boast about when he talks about the warm home discount. Instead, it will cut electricity bills by 20% for everyone. Government Members should think about this: at the last energy price cap, the reason bills went up was not gas—Ofgem was very clear about that—but because of the political choices of this Secretary of State. He keeps making them defend the indefensible. Speaking of the Secretary of State, where is he? Thousands of Aberdonians are losing their jobs—where is the Secretary of State? We are being locked into higher bills for two decades—where is the Secretary of State? We are missing out on an AI future—where is the Secretary of State? Since July he has bothered to come to the House to explain himself just once. He is a walking, talking cost of living crisis, and his mistakes will be with us for decades. If I have read the news correctly, he is apparently tucked away somewhere plotting his leadership bid. But let us be honest, the country was asked that question and it was very clear what it thought about the prospect of Prime Minister Miliband. He should stop plotting and start cutting people’s bills. The final question I would ask Labour Members is this: are they not fed up? Are they not fed up of defending these policies that keep turning to dust as soon as they meet reality, of telling their constituents they will cut their bills when instead bills keep rising, and of being political mushrooms left in the dark and fed a pile of manure? We were all mushrooms once, Madam Deputy Speaker. If this is going to be the one and only Parliament the Labour Members have, they should at least use it to do something worthwhile. They must stand up to the Secretary of State and stop him from locking their constituents into higher prices for longer. Put cheap energy first and vote for our motion tonight to back 200,000 jobs in the North sea, get back to growth and cut all our constituents’ electricity bills by 20%.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  The hon. and learned Gentleman is right to raise the plight of Northern Ireland. As he knows, there is a single energy market on the island of Ireland, but we need to cut electricity costs for everybody, right across these isles. The first part of our plan would be to axe the carbon tax. The carbon tax on electricity pushes up the price of gas, wind, solar and nuclear, and it has gone up by 70% this year, thanks to the Government’s policies. We asked Labour Ministers about this, and they pretended not to know anything. We warned them not to put the tax up, and they said it was a Conservative scare story, but here we are. The Secretary of State blames gas for high bills, and I am sure the Minister will do the same in his speech, but a third of what we pay for gas is a carbon tax that the Government choose to impose. If the Secretary of State thinks that the price of gas is too high, he could take off the carbon tax and cut the price of gas by a third tomorrow. Guess what? That would make wind, solar and nuclear cheaper, too. Every time someone blames gas, it is like them complaining that their bath is overrunning when they will not turn off the taps. It is in the Government’s gift to axe the carbon tax. It has gone up because of them, so what are they waiting for? Secondly, when the wind blows, there are wind farms in this country getting three times the market price for electricity, thanks to renewables obligation subsidies. That is clearly mad. The Secretary of State doubled those subsidies when he had his last chance to ruin the energy system. We closed the scheme in office, but it is time to scrap it. Those two policies would cut people’s electricity bills by 20% now, in time for winter—and in time for us to be a world leader in AI, and to stop the crippling redundancies in the industry that are coming down the track. Instead of taking up those policies, the Labour party is doing something very different: it is intent on locking us into higher prices for longer. The results of the Secretary of State’s botched wind auction will become clear in January. When the Government promised to cut bills, the cost of electricity was £72 a megawatt-hour. Last year, they locked in a fixed rate of £82 for offshore wind, and this year they are offering up to £117. These are fixed-rate, inflation-linked contracts, and they have extended the length of those contracts, so we will be paying these prices for 20 years. Essentially, they are signing us up to a 10% fixed-rate mortgage for 20 years, because they do not want to be on a 4% variable that moves around. The problem is this: if they sign up to higher prices than the current cost of electricity—this is before we include all the extra costs of wind, such as paying to turn it off when it is too windy, and paying for back-up when it is not windy enough—how will that cut bills? There will be higher prices for longer. Those are the prices that not only you and I will pay, Madam Deputy Speaker, but that our children will pay.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the reliability of electricity, which is what we need. We need electricity that will work in the winter when the sun is not shining, or when the wind is not blowing. The question I would ask is this: why is the Labour party signing up to those high prices and locking all our constituents in for 20 years? It is because the Secretary of State is in the pocket of the wind developers. These are the highest prices for wind power that we have seen in a decade. [ Interruption. ] Ministers might shake their heads, but that is just a fact. It is much higher than the price of electricity right now, so why would they be buying more than ever before at the highest prices in a generation and fixing those prices for 20 years? I say this to Labour Members: if their constituents are saying to them—which I am sure they are—that their bills are too high now, what will they say to them in January, when it will be the Labour party that locks them all into even higher prices for longer?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  I thank the Chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee for his time and willingness in going through the plan. Costs were not always so high; we actually had the lowest gas prices before the crisis, and we had lower electricity prices as well. What has happened is that we have switched a lot of costs into fixed costs, and those costs are increasing. It is something everybody is looking at, from the Tony Blair Institute to the trade unions—people right across the political spectrum. We need to address this issue because there is a huge amount on the line, whether that is growth or living standards. As I have said, AI is here in the near term; we cannot wait until the 2040s, which is the Government’s plan. Even then, it is not clear that their plan would bring down bills at all.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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

• 5 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  In January, the Supreme Court ruled that sex means biological sex. This was a huge victory for women’s rights, but now we hear that the Minister is kicking the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s much-needed guidance into the long grass. The law is not changing—the law is as it has always been—so will she release the guidance and make sure that women’s rights are protected?

• 5 Nov 2025 · Diversity, Equality and Inclusion: Public Sector · Hansard source

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  Labour’s previous definition of “Islamophobia” was adopted by councils that had grooming gang scandals, and it said that even talking about grooming gangs was an example of “anti-Muslim racism”. We know from Louise Casey that public servants did not speak up because they were scared of being called racist. The Government are now bringing in a new definition, but they are refusing to tell the public what is in it. Will the Minister commit to publishing the draft definition, before it is adopted, for full public scrutiny?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Energy Prices: Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  I welcome the new Ministers to the Front Bench. On the first day of recess, away from scrutiny, the Labour party published the prices for its allocation round 7 of the renewables auction. Labour used to say that renewables were nine times cheaper, but the prices that the Secretary of State has said he is willing to pay are 40% higher than the current cost of electricity—they are the highest prices in a decade—and he has extended the contract length to 20 years. Those are not just the prices that we will be paying; they are the prices that our children will be paying. Will the Minister explain how locking us into higher prices for longer will cut bills by £300?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State is trying to conflate two emissions trading schemes. He does not want to talk about the carbon tax on electricity, because he has increased it by 70% since the start of the year, pushing up everybody’s bills in the process. He is making electricity more expensive at the same time as taxing, banning and bribing people into electric cars and electric home heating—that is totally backwards. He is the worst enemy of a decarbonisation agenda in this country. Our cheap power plan would instantly cut electricity bills by 20%. The Secretary of State could do so tomorrow; what is he waiting for?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The carbon tax on electricity pushes up the cost of gas, wind, solar and nuclear in this country. It does not need to be there—the Secretary of State could axe the carbon tax tomorrow to instantly cut bills for every single family in this country. Why will he not?

• 10 Sept 2025 · Equality Act 2010: Impact on British Society · Hansard source

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  I believe that the hon. Gentleman is talking about discrimination. The point of being equal under the law is that the same protections from discrimination can protect his constituents, the hon. Member for Romford and me. The whole point of our common-law system is that we must all face the same law, whether that is for penalty or in the case of discrimination and harassment. He refers to many of the examples of discrimination and harassment that are in the Equality Act, but they were not created by that Act; they were created decades and decades earlier.

• 10 Sept 2025 · Equality Act 2010: Impact on British Society · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for her speech. Labour Members always try to equate protections against discrimination and harassment with the entirety of the Equality Act but, as many have said, protections against discrimination and harassment existed before the Act. They also exist in many other pieces of legislation, such as the Public Order Act 1986 and the Malicious Communications Act 1988. What answer does the Minister have to my questions about the public sector equality duty, which talks about advancing equality by taking specific action to address disproportionate participation? That is where we have seen some internships excluding young white people, for example.

• 10 Sept 2025 · Equality Act 2010: Impact on British Society · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) on securing this debate. This issue is having a fundamental impact on our society but is not discussed enough. I associate myself with his remarks about Don’t Divide Us and its excellent report, which I urge everybody to read. We are not a country that divides ourselves into tribe, clan or creed. We do not believe that one sex is more intelligent or more modest than the other. We do not persecute people for their religion or sexuality. At our heart, we are a country built on Christian and enlightenment values and common law. The desire for reason and the belief that we should want for our neighbour what we want for ourselves and that we should be equal before the law have steered us towards being a more meritocratic society than almost any other in the world. I believe in making sure that opportunity can reach people no matter their background, class or circumstances, and I do think that we have some way to go in that regard. However, deep in our national psyche, we believe in judging someone by their character and not by their characteristics. There is a proud legacy of laws passed by Parliament that shows this tendency of ours to protect the few from discrimination or harassment by the many. As many Members have said, the Equality Act 2010 brought together many existing laws on discrimination, including rights for pregnant women and disabled people. Those were certainly important pieces of legislation, but they serve as a reminder that just as human rights were not created by the Human Rights Act in 1998, equality was not created by the Equality Act in 2010. The Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine), talked about being evidence-based; the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights conducted a review of the public sector equality duty in Scotland and found that “there was virtually no robust evidence of positive change in the lives of people with protected characteristics”. We should not fall into the trap of treating this piece of legislation as flawless or beyond scrutiny just because it speaks to values that we hold dear. The Equality Act did not just bring together discrimination and harassment laws, but went much further. It imposed a legal duty on public bodies and private institutions to promote equality based on nine specific characteristics. In turn, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romford pointed out, that has created an industry that wants to force a statistically perfect division on the basis of sex and race in all parts of society, even though that is impossible to achieve. It encourages us to presume that every disparity is a result of prejudice and to turn even minor workplace differences into legal grievances. Worst of all, unelected officials in our institutions have worked behind closed doors with radical activists, who prescribe social engineering to get equal outcomes, even when it takes a hammer to the British people’s sense of fairness and is against the law. In seeking to progress equality, these aspects of the Act have changed our culture and taken us backwards. We do not believe that people should be held back from progression because of their protected characteristics, but in the RAF, white male recruits were deliberately blocked from training and given fewer opportunities because of their race and sex. We do not believe that women should be paid less than men for the same work, but in the Department for Education, they are using the Equality Act to justify paying men a thousand pounds more than women for the same jobs in childcare. We do not believe in employing people just because of their race, but senior officers at West Yorkshire police rigged the recruitment process to hire an ethnic minority candidate, who had failed their interview, just to meet a diversity target. Thanks to the Labour Government, a young person’s opportunity to take their first steps serving this country in the civil service is based not on how hard they work but on what job their parents did when their child was 14 years old. If you are the child of a nurse, cabbie or shopkeeper, I am sorry, but you are just not working class enough—the door is shut to you. In internships up and down the country, including at MI6, young white people have been told they cannot even apply. Here is the problem: the Equality Act has created a hierarchy of diversity. Women are told that their rights are not as important as trans rights. If a white boy grew up in care, had parents were alcoholics or had recovered from a life-changing disease, tough luck—he is not as deserving as an ethnic minority. Who is to say whose adversity has been more of a challenge? How can we fit the whole of human experience into these tidy little boxes? When rights clash, as they do, who gets to choose which group is deemed more worthy? When it came to gender ideology, it was bureaucrats behind closed doors, often working hand in glove with extreme activist groups. When women lost their jobs or were forced to share changing rooms with men, it was HR departments citing the Equality Act who held the pitchforks. Across the NHS, police forces, local councils and Government Departments, it was unelected officials who were using the Equality Act as a weapon to undermine meritocracy. In the cases of Birmingham and Next, it was unaccountable, independent experts who decided that manual shift work was equal to retail and office work. In the case of Next, when employees were given the chance, they refused to move to warehouses. The work was deemed of equal value, even when it was clearly not thought to be so by the workers themselves. That is simply absurd. One ruling bankrupted a council, and the other will push up costs for consumers, all because of decisions made by people who are unaccountable. More such cases are on the way. This hierarchy of diversity does not reflect the values upon which this country was built: fairness and merit, judging individuals by their actions and their character, not by their immutable characteristics. We cannot assign innocence or guilt, merit or privilege, by characteristic, placing some groups on a pedestal while others are pushed aside. The public see a society where protection is selective, and where the playing field tilts towards those who can claim special status. We heard today calls from the hon. Member for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) to have yet more special statuses, but surely, the answer is this: the law that protects me from discrimination should protect my hon. Friend the Member for Romford and his constituents from discrimination, when we are all equal before the law. It is about to get worse, because the Government are set on introducing an Islamophobia definition, which they have tried to do behind closed doors. That will have a chilling effect on the ability of our public services to grasp difficult and sensitive issues, such as grooming gangs, gender inequality or Islamist extremism. They are doing this under the pretence of combating hatred and violence, which are already against the law. Instead of doing the hard graft of breaking down barriers and creating opportunity, Ministers want to hand yet more powers to consultants and HR officials in a undefined race and equality Bill to further shape the world according to who they deem worthy. It is easier, after all, to talk about quotas at diversity conferences than it is to fix entrenched problems in education, geography, family structures and culture. Because it is easier to judge physical characteristics, it risks creating a system that overlooks each individual’s personal circumstances and what they may have overcome. Giving pen pushers more authority to dictate who is privileged does not create more opportunity or make Britain more fair or prosperous, so we should ask: what message does this send to our children? Do we want them to believe that their future is determined by tick boxes on a form? Do we want them to grow up thinking that fairness means that some doors are closed to them because of their race or sex, or do we want them to live in a country where the law guarantees equal treatment and opportunity for all? It is time to put an end to the social experiment and return to first principles: equal treatment under the law, equal opportunity in life and the belief that the people of this country can rise as far as their talent and determination can take them. That is what genuine equality looks like, and that is what the British people believe in.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Net Zero Policies · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State tried to argue yesterday that he is a climate change believer and everybody else who disagrees with him is a denier, because he does not want to engage with any legitimate criticism of his policies. He is offshoring British industries—in other words, replacing British goods with dirtier imports with higher emissions. Can the Minister confirm what the scientific evidence is that doing so will help to tackle climate change?

• 15 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Yesterday, the Secretary of State said I was hiding when I was, in fact, with my six-month-old baby, who I know he is aware of. On behalf of all young mums who face those kinds of comments in their first few weeks back at work, may I gently suggest he reflects on those remarks? I want to ask the Secretary of State a very simple question: is £82 higher or lower than £72?

• 15 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I do not know whether the Secretary of State does not know or does not want to say, but £72 a megawatt-hour is what electricity cost last year, and £82 is the price he has paid for offshore wind, and he is set to do the same this year—and that is before the extra costs for the grid for wasted wind and back-up, which are going through the roof, thanks to his policies. Yesterday, he committed to radical honesty. In that spirit, will he admit either that he cannot add up, or that his policies cannot bring down bills?

• 10 Jul 2025 · Electricity Market Review · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. I know that this has been a difficult decision for him. He told everyone that his flagship mission was to commission more renewable power than ever before by 2030—more wind than ever before and faster than ever before in a market that was already facing supply-chain challenges and soaring costs. I said at the time that it was completely unfeasible but that if he was going to do it he should take every opportunity to minimise the grid infrastructure that needs to be built and the costs of his plans. On the other hand, I know that he will have had wind developers telling him that if he takes those decisions and makes those choices, they will not be bidding into his auction in the next couple of years—the auctions he needs them to bid into so that he can meet his self-imposed targets—because they want to protect their returns. When faced with a choice between protecting the profits of wind developers and cutting bills for the British people, the Secretary of State has chosen the wind developers, who know that they have him over a barrel. In setting himself an unachievable 2030 target that was based on ideology and ideology alone, he was telling those wind developers that he has to buy whatever they are selling, no matter the price. A little over a year ago, the Secretary of State told the country that bills would come down by up to £300, but his statement today shows that when push comes to shove he will choose higher bills for the British people to fund profits for renewable energy companies. Worse still, what he did not mention is that today’s announcement means higher bills to pay wind farms billions in constraint payments not to produce energy but simply to switch off. I have warned the Secretary of State repeatedly about the risks of building more wind before grid, and I asked him to continue my work on what a full system cost of energy would look like, which includes the cost of back-up and constraint payments. But he did not listen. He axed that work because he did not want to know what those costs were. Instead, last year he signed us up to the most expensive wind prices in a decade, at about £86 per megawatt-hour. That is almost 15% higher than the average cost of electricity for the last year, which has been about £74 per megawatt-hour. This year’s prices will probably be the same, if not higher, and he wants to extend those contracts to 20 years. He has not explained how locking us into much higher prices for longer will bring down bills—but lower bills is what he has promised the British public. There is more. The Secretary of State’s plan requires more grid to be built faster than before—that means £74 on to household bills. His plans mean that constraint payments for wind farms to switch off will rise to £8 billion—that means £100 on to bills. Now we read that we will be paying solar farms to switch off when it is sunny too, and the Office for Budget Responsibility says that green levies will rise by £5 billion. People may have noticed that the Secretary of State used to talk a lot about cheaper energy but now talks about less volatile prices. What his Back Benchers need to realise is that most people would not swap a 4% variable rate mortgage for an 8% fixed one. What they care about is the price of their bills, and they want cheaper prices. If he was truly interested in bringing down bills, he would not have scrapped the analysis that I started last year to find out the true cost of a system dominated by wind and solar. I have now read—twice in one week—that Downing Street is starting to pressure the Secretary of State about when his plans might actually bring down bills. All I can say is: I share the feeling! Before repeating all the empty promises about cutting bills by £300, Downing Street might have wanted to ask where his evidence was, but I will ask him now. Will he reinstate that cost of energy work so that we can clearly see the differences between the systems? Will he set out a road map to show exactly how he will lower bills? Will he confirm that he will not sign up to prices in this year’s wind auction that are higher than the current average cost of electricity? Can he also confirm whether he saw a full cost-benefit analysis of the choices in front of him today, and does he share the views of Ofgem and NESO? I will leave the Secretary of State with two quotes. The chief executive of Octopus Energy—one of the country’s biggest advocates of renewables—has said that the Secretary of State’s plans mean “soaring costs, locked in for years to come, and more on the way… And the more we build, the worst it gets, for years.” He also said, “It’s brutal for families and crippling for growth.” I think the Secretary of State said in his statement that the biggest problem for businesses is uncertainty, but it is not; it is high energy costs. The second quote—perhaps the most revealing— comes from one of his closest advisers, his chief energy system adviser, who said, “If we procure lots and lots of renewable generation and then we do not build the grid that allows it to get to markets, we will be wasting lots and lots of money.” I could not have put it better myself.

• 2 Jul 2025 · Heathrow Substation Outage: NESO Review · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I feel older, wiser and significantly more sleep-deprived. I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. I also thank NESO for its rapid work. The report is clear that there have been serious failings by National Grid to fix an issue that it knew about for seven years. The Minister is right; that is unacceptable. What is most important, though, is what happens now. I have some questions for the Minister. First, who at National Grid made the decision to defer critical maintenance of the transformer in 2022? He said that he would hold them accountable, so how will he do that? He spoke about breaching licence conditions. What are the penalties for doing that and what accountability mechanisms will he use? Secondly, the report says that the North Hyde site did not meet modern standards on physical barriers between transformers. Can the Minister confirm he has asked National Grid to review substations with transformers built before the current standards were put in place? Thirdly, what steps will he take to look at the resilience of our energy system, particularly in the light of the heightened geopolitical risk that we all face? The key message that we should take from the report on the Heathrow blackout is the importance of critical national infrastructure to our energy security and our national security. In that regard, it is the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change who is playing with fire. A week after the blackout hit Heathrow, Spain and Portugal gave us a stark warning of what happens when countries fail to protect their energy security: public transport down, payment systems down and millions of people unable to cook, travel or contact their families. Tragically, people lost their lives. In the case of North Hyde, the blackout affected schools, the London Underground, Hillingdon hospital and 70,000 customers, some of whom had to move out of their homes. That is the price we pay when we do not take energy security seriously. It is not a nice-to-have—energy is a basic need—and yet this Government are putting our energy at risk. The national security strategy that the Government published just last week included 12 mentions of climate but not a single mention of the risk that China poses to our energy system. Last year, our intelligence services warned that Chinese state-sponsored hackers were working to disrupt and destroy critical infrastructure in the event of conflict, and yet the Secretary of State is rushing to make Britain dependent on Chinese solar panels, Chinese rare earths and Chinese batteries in just five years’ time. We have just seen China limit the export of critical minerals in its trade war with the US. We have seen kill switches found in Chinese inverters. The US intelligence services have warned us about the risk of surveillance devices in Chinese wind turbines. I first wrote to the Secretary of State eight months ago, asking him to publish an assessment of what his targets mean for our reliance on Chinese imports. He has not even bothered to reply. If the Secretary of State wants to hand over the keys of our energy supply to the Chinese Communist party, he should come to this House and explain why. We are lucky enough in this country to be surrounded by our own gas fields, but the Secretary of State does not care. This is a man who would rather import gas from Norway, from the very same fields in the North sea that he is banning Britain from using; who is pouring concrete down our gas wells; and who is blocking off any contingency plan that Britain might need in a crisis. I do not say this lightly, but this is a man who is putting our national security at risk. Today we are talking about the first transformer fire in a decade in this country and he did not even bother to turn up. That is the problem. The Secretary of State might prefer to be in Brazil, Baku, Beijing or wherever he is today, but he should be here to explain himself, because as the former head of MI6 said, he is pursuing an energy policy that is “completely crazy” when it comes to national security. I want clean energy from nuclear, from small modular reactors and from the next generation of British innovation, but first and foremost I want energy that keeps the lights on and keeps bills down. This Government are going to leave us completely reliant on foreign imports: from China, from Norway, from Qatar—from anywhere as long as it is not Britain. NESO and Ofgem will do their work, but the Minister must do his work too. Alongside the work of the North Hyde report, can he confirm that he will come back and update the House on his plans to protect the energy resilience of this country?