‘The zealots are turning people off’: Claire Coutinho on net zero and her bond with Rishi Sunak

When Claire Coutinho picked her A-levels in 2002, she received a phone call from her grandmother in India. ‘She could see that I’d not picked medical subjects,’ Coutinho says: she’d gone for maths, history of art and English – a glitch in the matrix for a family that tends to choose medical school. ‘She told me that she may not last very long and it was her final wish that I reconsider.’ Coutinho stuck to plan A; her grandmother lived for another ten years. Last month, at 38, she became one of the youngest secretaries of state in British history.

We meet in her soon-to-be-vacated office with a rooftop view of Westminster Abbey and a whole floor of advisers and aides. Not so long ago, Coutinho was one of those advisers. She had begun her career in finance but, looking at the career train tracks ahead, she jumped off. She tried catering, the charity sector and other jobs, moved to politics and ended up as special adviser to Rishi Sunak. Elected in 2019, she’s now seen as his closest cabinet colleague.

She was made Energy Secretary with a particular purpose: to change the course of Tory environment policy. Last week, two net-zero commitments were dropped: delaying the 2030 petrol and diesel car ban to 2035 and slowing down the phasing-out of gas boilers. The agenda, she insists, is not to bury net zero but to save it.

‘I’ve worked with Rishi for a long time and I’ve talked to him about the environment and climate change,’ she says. ‘We are actually safeguarding the future of climate change policy. What you see in Europe is that lots of people are losing faith, they see it as something that politicians are doing to them.