Claire Coutinho

I will not; I will continue. Once again, we simply have no answers. I find all this very strange, because at our last encounter in this House, the Secretary of State was keen to confess that he was a “super-nerd”. As someone who has been a lifelong mathlete, I am the first person to want to champion a fellow super-nerd, but when I meet super-nerds they normally like evidence, facts and numbers. Whenever we look at what the Secretary of State has set out, there are no numbers attached. He talks about decarbonising the grid by 2030, but he has not set out the full system costs of that. He promises profits and bill savings from GB Energy, but he cannot tell us by when or how much. When it comes to the Bill and its 2030 target, it is clear that the Secretary of State does not have the numbers, because two weeks ago he wrote a letter to the director of the Electricity System Operator. I have it here. Do you know what he said, Madam Deputy Speaker? He asked the director to please “provide practical advice on achieving clean power by 2030”, including a “High-level assessment of costs”. Given that we are talking about people’s energy bills, I think the public would like a detailed look at what this is going to cost them. To top it off, he asked the director to advise what actions his Government should take “to enable delivery…clearly setting out where further work is required.” The evidence could not be clearer. He went into a general election with a pledge and no idea how to achieve it, what it will cost or whether it is achievable at all.