Rishi Sunak has come under scrutiny from opposition ministers and environmental groups, who called his decision not to attend Cop27 a “failure” and said it brought into question government commitments to prioritise net zero and tackle the climate crisis. King Charles is free to decide whether or not to attend the Cop27 climate summit, the new environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has said as she defended the decision of the prime minister not to go. Earlier this month, sources told the Guardian the king would not attend the international gathering in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, after reports that the former prime minister, Liz Truss, had intervened. The UK’s windfall tax on oil and gas profits must be changed to raise billions more and to stop companies using loopholes to invest in further fossil fuel extraction, the outgoing president of global climate talks, Alok Sharma, has said. The government has delayed publication of clean water and biodiversity targets, putting it in breach of its Environment Act, ministers have admitted. Coffey published a written ministerial statement on Friday confirming that the targets underpinning the country’s nature recovery would not be released on 31 October as promised. Sunak has dropped his Conservative leadership campaign pledge to fine patients £10 if they miss a GP or hospital appointment. The prime minister had told Tory members in August it was “wrong” that there are “15m missed appointments every year NHS” at GPs and hospitals, as he justified the fine as a “tough” measure to change people’s behaviour. Sunak got a taste of how the “difficult decisions” he has said will guide spending cuts may go down with the public, when he was challenged by a hospital patient about nurses’ pay. When 77-year old Catherine Poole was asked by Sunak if the staff had looked after “really nicely”, she looked him straight in the eye and replied: “They always do. It is a pity you don’t pay them more.” Sunak refused to deny suggestions that officials warned him against reappointing Suella Braverman as home secretary. He said he was confident Braverman had “learned from her mistake” and insisted he does not regret the appointment. Northern Ireland is on course for a snap election after a recall of the Stormont assembly failed to elect a speaker and break political deadlock. The Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, said he is “extremely disappointed” that a last-ditch effort to restore the multiparty executive at Stormont failed.