Claire Coutinho

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. It is always a pleasure to see him in the Chamber making excellent points. The question that I have is this: why has the Secretary of State set up a duplicate programme with no instructions for governance, independent review, investment plans or consumer savings that he can be judged by? Why should taxpayers’ money fund a similar entity when the only difference that I can discern is that it gives the Secretary of State unchecked power? What is it about the £8 billion of taxpayer money that he can direct without checks or balances that first attracted him to the idea of GB Energy? These are fair and reasonable questions for us as the Opposition to ask, and he must look to improve the governance in this Bill. Let me turn to the promises that he made. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Secretary of State and at least 50 Labour MPs promised their constituents in the July election that GB Energy would save them £300 a year on their energy bills. They said it on their election literature, on social media and in hustings. They said it because they were told to do so by the Secretary of State, but I listened very closely to his speech today and I did not hear him make a promise that GB Energy will save them £300 on their energy bills. In a debate just before the summer recess, the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), would not repeat the promise either. That is because they all know that it is not true. In fact, one of Labour’s first acts in government has been to take away up to £300 from 10 million pensioners this winter, including two thirds of pensioners in poverty. It takes some nerve for the Labour party to say that it never wanted to do this, because the winter fuel payment was in the manifesto of the Secretary of State’s party when he wrote it in 2010. It was in there when he was leader in 2015, it was in there in 2017 and in 2019, but in 2024 it was omitted. There was no mention at all for the first time in 14 years. I will give credit to the right hon. Gentleman—something that I do not always do. When he was leader in 2015, he put it in his manifesto that he would take the payment away from the top 5% of pensioners. He will remember that. He had the courtesy of telling the public his plans, but, professional politician that he is, I suggest that he would have clocked that it was not included this time round. He has been in politics for 30 years and would have known what that meant, so I hope that he can confirm today whether he had any conversations with the Prime Minister, the Chancellor or Morgan McSweeney before the manifesto came out. If so, he sent out those Labour candidates—all the people on the Benches behind him—with this false promise of the £300 energy savings when someone clearly knew that they were going to take that amount away from millions of pensioners this winter.