CAMERON CHALLENGE ON CARBON FOOTPRINT

03-11-2007

David Cameron is being challenged by Black Country MP Tom Watson to declare his carbon footprint. The Conservative leader has been rocked by a Watson's revelations about his party's use of a donated private jet.

As we've reported previously, the West Brom MP and other bloggers have been investigating a Bermuda-based company called Flying Lion, which has supplied flights to Cameron, Sutton Coldfield MP Andrew Mitchell and other leading Tories. (see link here)

The story was picked up in Saturday's Guardian, where political correspondent David Hencke points out that that Gordon Brown's weekly flights from Edinburgh are on scheduled airlines.

Cameron, in contrast, has taken private helicopter flights to cover such short distances as Birmingham to Warwick.

The thrust of Hencke's article echoes a point we've already made - that the true cost of travel (given that it's on a private jet) doesn't appear to be adequately reflected in the declaration of donations made to parliament. (see link here)

Then there's the issue of Co2 emissions - a potential source of embarrassment for a man dedicated to turning the Blue party green.

In September the Conservatives launched a "Quality Of Life" report and in it Cameron said that although government action is necessary to create a sustainable planet, he added that it also "depends on the billions of personal decisions made every day - in businesses, in communities and in individual lives."

Tom Watson told The Stirrer, "It's typical Conservative hypocrisy. A handful of top Tories have flown 184,000 miles in a luxury jet and David Cameron has taken 70 flights within the UK alone.

"If he's going to live up to the expectations of others I challenge him to publish figures for his own carbon footprint. He must know what it is because he carbon offsets all his journeys."