PRIME MINISTER Rishi Sunak put Grant Shapps in charge of the new Energy Security and Net Zero Department today, despite the ex-business secretary’s poor voting record on efforts to tackle climate change.

The Welwyn Hatfield MP backed an exemption for national security and defence as well as taxation and spending policies from requirements to show “due regard to environmental issues” in 2021, according to theyworkforyou.com.

The accountability website, which bases its data on official Parliamentary Hansard records, also notes that the former transport secretary helped his party colleagues defeat a move to ban the burning of vegetation in carbon-capture peat bogs in the same year.

Mr Shapps’s move across Whitehall was part of a Cabinet mini-reshuffle by the floundering PM, who was forced to sack party chairman Nadhim Zahawi last week over tax-dodging allegations.

Today, the former education secretary was replaced by key Sunak ally Greg Hands, who previously served as trade minister.

One main element of the shake-up, branded by Civil Service union PCS as “rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic,” saw the Business, Trade and Culture Departments restructured into four different ministries.

The changes saw Thatcherite Kemi Badenoch become the new business and trade secretary, while South-East Cambridgeshire MP Lucy Frazer was made culture secretary in a department shorn of its responsibility for digital technology, focusing instead on creative arts and sport.

Michelle Donelan moved from culture to the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

The PM claimed the reforms would allow the government to “reflect the priorities of the British people and be designed to deliver for them.”

But Labour accused Downing Street of failing to prioritise long-term industrial planning amid the break-up of the now-defunct business, energy and industrial strategy department.

Shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the move “shows quite clearly that [Mr Sunak] has no plan to drive growth in our fantastic industries.”

The TUC noted demanded a “much-needed reset” after ministers rushed widely condemned anti-strike laws through the Commons last week.

The union body urged Ms Badenoch to “immediately drop” her predecessor’s Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill — set to face fierce opposition in the House of Lords — and talk to unions to end national strikes across the NHS, railways and elsewhere.

“Instead of attacking the right to strike, ministers should be negotiating in good faith — our doors remain open,” general secretary Paul Nowak stressed.