Claire Coutinho

Coutinho was born in 1985 in London. Her parents emigrated from India in the late 1970s and are of Goan Christian descent. Her father Winston is a retired anaesthetist, and her mother Maria is a GP.[4][5][6] Coutinho was privately educated at James Allen's Girls' School in Dulwich.[7] She studied mathematics and philosophy at Exeter College, Oxford.[7][8] After graduating, she worked in the emerging markets equity team as an associate at the investment bank Merrill Lynch for nearly four years.[7][9] In 2012, Coutinho left the company,[10] and co-founded a literary-themed supper club, The Novel Diner.[11][12][13] Two years later, she appeared on the cooking game show The Taste.[4]

Coutinho then worked for two years at Iain Duncan Smith's centre-right think tank Centre for Social Justice. She then became a programme director for the industry group Housing and Finance Institute.[9][14] After this, she worked for accounting firm KPMG as their education lead.[7] Coutinho left the company to become a special adviser at HM Treasury. Initially she worked for Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury Julian Smith,[15] and then became an aide to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Rishi Sunak.[16] Coutinho has commented that she left KPMG to join the government as a special adviser so that she could help deliver Brexit "from the inside", which she had supported in the 2016 EU referendum.[7]

Coutinho was selected as the Conservative candidate for East Surrey on 11 November 2019.[17] It is a safe Conservative constituency having elected a member of the party since 1918.[4] She was elected as MP in the 2019 general election with a majority of 24,040 (40.3%).[18] The seat had previously been held by former minister Sam Gyimah who had the Conservative whip withdrawn after voting for the EU Withdrawal Act, an attempt to prevent a no-deal Brexit, and had subsequently joined the Liberal Democrats.[19]

She was appointed as a Parliamentary Private Secretary at HM Treasury, and joined the advisory board of the centre-right think tank Onward in February 2020.[20][21]

She supported Dominic Cummings for taking a road trip to Durham amid a 2020 controversy.[22] A number of days later, an apparent protest took place as the windows of the East Surrey Conservative Association offices were daubed in black paint.[23]

Coutinho supported Brexit,[7] and voted in the House of Commons against further EU integration. She also voted against introducing a proportional representation system for electing MPs.[24]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Claire Coutinho.

• Official website

• Profile at Parliament of the United Kingdom
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard
• Voting record at Public Whip
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou