MPS SET TO BACK CLIMATE CHANGE BILL

The Government is expected to table measures to include international aviation and shipping in the Climate Change Bill when MPs vote on a series of amendments to the legislation.

Ministers have already agreed to strengthen the long-term target for the Bill, which will now commit the UK to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050.

The Bill makes the UK the first country to sign up to legally binding national targets for reducing the emissions which lead to climate change.

The decision to include international flights and shipping, which had originally been left out of the law, has been hailed by environmentalists.

Andy Atkins, executive director of Friends of the Earth, said the move was the final part of the jigsaw and would mean "the world's first climate change law will also be a world-class climate change law".

Conservation campaigners WWF congratulated the Government for its "ambitious piece of legislation" which sets the UK up as a world leader on climate change.

But ahead of the Tuesday night vote, WWF's chief executive David Nussbaum urged the Government to ensure that at least 70% of the emissions cuts take place in the UK - and are not bought in through "offsets" from schemes abroad.

"If the Bill does not guarantee that most emissions reductions are delivered domestically, then the UK risks locking itself into a high-carbon infrastructure and forfeits the opportunity to create a wave of new green collar jobs," he warned.

The Climate Change Bill, which is expected to get Royal Assent by the end of November, requires the Government to publish five-yearly "carbon budgets" capping emissions from this year.