Claire Coutinho

Claire Coutinho
Claire Coryl Julia Coutinho (born 8 July 1985) is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero since August 2023. She previously served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Families and Wellbeing from October 2022 to August 2023 and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Disabled People from September to October 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, she has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for East Surrey since the 2019 general election.
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
Claire Coryl Julia Coutinho was born on 8 July 1985 in London. 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. Coutinho attended James Allen's Girls' School, a private day school in Dulwich, before studying mathematics and philosophy at Exeter College, Oxford. After graduating, she worked in the emerging markets equity team as an associate at the investment bank Merrill Lynch for nearly four years. In 2012, Coutinho left the company, and co-founded, with food writer Mina Holland, a literary-themed events company called The Novel Diner. Two years later, she appeared on the cooking game show The Taste judged by Anthony Bourdain and Nigella Lawson. The Novel Diner was dissolved in 2015.
Coutinho worked at Iain Duncan Smith's centre-right think tank Centre for Social Justice 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. In the former role, she focussed on financial inclusion, education, and regeneration policy. After this, she worked for accounting firm KPMG as a Corporate Responsibility Manager between 2017 and 2018. Coutinho left the company to become a special adviser at HM Treasury. Initially she worked for Chief Whip Julian Smith, and then became an aide to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Rishi Sunak. 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.
Parliamentary career
Coutinho was selected as the Conservative candidate for East Surrey on 11 November 2019. It is a safe Conservative constituency having elected a member of the party since 1918. She was elected as MP in the 2019 general election with a majority of 24,040 (40.3%). 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.
In May 2020, she was criticised by several of her local constituents for supporting Dominic Cummings (then the PM's chief advisor) in taking a controversial 260 mile trip from London to County Durham during a national lockdown in the COVID-19 pandemic. 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.
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. She was a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Policy Exchange in 2021. 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, and endorsed Sunak in the July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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.
Honours
On 15 September 2023, she was sworn in as a Privy Counsellor, entitling her to the honorific The Right Honourable for life.
References
External links
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Living people
Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
Female members of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom
UK MPs 2019–present
21st-century British women politicians
Alumni of Exeter College, Oxford
KPMG people
Merrill (company) people
Female members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies
1985 births
21st-century English women
21st-century English people
British people of Indian descent
British people of Goan descent
British Secretaries of State
People educated at James Allen's Girls' School
British Eurosceptics
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom