Five takeaways from Rishi Sunak’s August 2023 ‘mini-reshuffle’

4. More change at DESNZ 

Shapps’ departure means Rishi Sunak has chosen to disrupt his new energy security and net zero department just seven months after it was created. Leadership churn will not be helpful in a department with a long to-do list. New secretary of state Claire Coutinho’s legislative in-tray is tricky: she immediately picks up the energy bill, whose Commons report stage is scheduled for next week’s return of parliament, and will have to deal with amendments flying at her from both sides of the increasingly contentious post-Uxbridge net zero debate.
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House of Commons, Energy Bill [HL], As Amended, Report Stage: 31 August 2023, retrieved 31 August 2023, 

 Indications since the by-election suggest that the Conservatives want to make the costs of net zero a wedge issue at the next election.  

The budget later this autumn is also when chancellor Jeremy Hunt is likely to unveil whatever response he thinks the UK needs to make to the US’s Inflation Reduction Act and the EU’s Green Deal subsidies. This is another potential election battleground, with Labour committed to ramping up green spending over the course of the next parliament if elected, something the government is not keen to match – though we do not know how deep they had to dig to persuade Tata to set up its battery production plant in Somerset.   

Coutinho also faces questions over the viability of the next round of offshore wind licensing, pressure on the electric vehicle charging and heat pump roll-outs, and energy bills more generally, even though the price cap has come down considerably. She and Sunak will also need to decide how to respond to the Climate Change Committee’s charge that the UK has lost its international leadership position on climate change since COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. 
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Cooper C and Wallace A, ‘Rishi Sunak has lost global climate leader status, say its own expert advisers, Politico EU, 28 June 2023, retrieved 31 August 2023, www.politico.eu/article/uk-rishi-sunak-has-lost-global-climate-leader-status-say-its-own-expert-advisers 

Coutinho’s first cabinet role is a major promotion – she has only been a parliamentary under-secretary of state, the most junior ministerial role, so far in her career, and is the first of the 2019 intake to become a cabinet minister. This promotion may reflect her close relationship with the PM – she was Sunak’s parliamentary private secretary (PPS) when he was chancellor and served as his special adviser before being elected.