Liberal Democrats pull out of climate change agreement with the Conservatives

9.43.36pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 13th Jun 2006

The Liberal Democrats today suspended their participation in a cross-party approach to climate change due to failure to reach agreement with the Conservatives on the development of specific policies.

Sir Menzies Campbell said: "We are open to co-operation with other parties on the key challenge of climate change, but it is evident to us that this does require urgent agreement on specific measures. The Tories are unable to provide that agreement.

"When the Conservatives have some specific ideas to discuss, we will be happy to look at participation again. The whole idea of the cross-party approach was to allow all parties to be braver in putting forward new ideas, but the Conservatives are unable to commit.

"Nuclear power, fuel duty, vehicle excise duty and the climate change levy are all areas where we believe we have to make a judgement now."

The issue was brought to a head by attempts to negotiate a joint submission to the all-party climate change group which is enquiring into the cross-party approach. The agreement between the parties dates back to December, following an initiative taken by Charles Kennedy during the general election.

The talks over the joint submission were led for the Liberal Democrats by Chris Huhne, the shadow environment secretary, who reported back on progress to today's shadow cabinet.

Chris Huhne said: "We could not even get the Conservatives to agree that green taxes should rise as a percentage of national income, even though the leading countries in this field all levy more than we do as a way of changing behaviour. It is all very well agreeing to targets, but you have to have some idea of how you are going to meet them if you are going to be taken seriously."