Claire Coutinho emerged as the Tory frontbencher taking deputy prime minister’s questions today, with the shadow energy secretary focusing on oil and gas licences and cabinet dysfunction. Those two topics are more closely related this week than usual: Coutinho wanted to exploit the report that Ed Miliband had ‘ghosted’ Keir Starmer when the Prime Minister was trying to get him to accept a cut to his departmental budget. She was also keen to talk about North Sea exploration, given tomorrow is the Aberdeen South by-election.
Lammy had been well prepared for these questions, but didn’t seem particularly passionate or personally invested in them
David Lammy, standing in for Starmer, was ready for the ghosting story, responding to it even before Coutinho had raised it. He told her in his first answer not to believe everything she read in the papers, adding: ‘The Prime Minister and the Energy Secretary have been discussing cutting bills by over £100, we’ve got our warm homes plan lifting millions of families out of fuel poverty and securing enough energy projects to power 23 million homes. She was the energy secretary who left our country exposed to global fossil fuel markets.’
The shadow energy secretary claimed bills had come down when she was a minister, and asked him how many jobs had been lost in Aberdeen due to ‘pointless virtue signalling’ since Labour had come to power. Lammy replied that she had once enthusiastically championed net zero when she was in government as energy secretary, but had ‘forgotten because they’re desperately chasing Reform’ now. He listed the investment that the government had put into the industry and Aberdeen specifically.
Coutinho came back to argue that 1,000 jobs were being lost in the oil industry every month, and that those who were losing their jobs were moving into new roles which are paid half as much. How would he feel if the government forced him to take a pay cut, she asked. Lammy insisted that ‘we’re not turning off the taps’ and that Labour was championing a ‘mixed economy’. He had been well prepared for these questions, but didn’t seem particularly passionate or personally invested in them. This is unusual for Lammy, who is normally very high energy at the dispatch box.
Finally Coutinho raised the ‘ghosting’ story, to which Lammy again told her to stop reading the newspapers. ‘When the defence investment plan is published, it will set out how every government department is contributing to defence including the energy department. We will always put national security first.’ He also said energy bills would have been higher if the UK had followed Kemi Badenoch’s advice and gone ‘feet first’ into the war in Iran. Coutinho replied ‘if everything is so hunky dory, why did half of his defence team quit last week?’ She then listed projects that the government could find money for instead of funding the DIP. She described Miliband as ‘out of control’.
Lammy returned that defence was the ‘number one priority’ and then listed resignations of previous Tory defence secretaries, as though the Conservatives being bad was enough to make Labour fine. ‘If everything is fine,’ asked Coutinho, ‘why is he here?’ She was pointing at the newly installed Dan Jarvis, who was sitting on the government frontbench next to Lammy. Lammy decided to answer the question as though it referred to him, saying he was there because the Prime Minister was at the G7. He didn’t look like he’d regretted standing in this time, but neither did he manage to sound that enthusiastic about Starmer.
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