Government adviser Porritt attacks green record

The Government admitted it "could do better" on the environment yesterday after one of its leading advisers launched a stinging attack on its green record on the eve of the Earth summit in Johannesburg.

In a series of media interviews yesterday, Sir Jonathon Porritt accused Tony Blair and the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, of failing to show leadership on main environmental issues, dumping green issues on to the Department of the Environment and of putting their "naive adulation" of big business before sustainable development.

Sir Jonathon, chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, said there was paralysis and cowardice in the Government on reform of the World Trade Organisation, and International Monetary Fund and multinational companies.

Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for the Environment, insisted that Mr Blair was showing leadership and that sustainable development was at the heart of the Government's policy. But she added: "What I do accept is that we need to do more and do better."

In an interview with The Independent, she raised the stakes before the summit, which begins today, by warning that failure to reach a concrete deal threatened existing global agreements on the environment. "If Johannesburg were to fail that would be a huge lost opportunity," she said.

Mrs Beckett, who heads the British delegation, said the 160-nation gathering presented an opportunity for the world to achieve a "step-change" for the future of the planet.

She predicted that Britain would play a pivotal role at the Johannesburg summit, and said the Government was determined the summit would marry the sometimes contradictory aims of the green and anti-poverty movements and produce detailed plans requiring nations to take action to achieve those ends. "We want a political declaration, which is sound and which commits the world to making a step-change, really putting sustainable development at the heart of the policy and approach of the world."

Mrs Beckett said she was disappointed that President Bush, as head of the world's most powerful and most polluting nation, would not be present and said the Government had done "everything we could to try to persuade him to go". But she insisted the Americans were engaged in the environmental and development issues facing the summit.

In a sideswipe at the White House's hostility to international agreements to cut carbon emissions, she said: "We are seeing very clear evidence of the damage that global warming will mean."

* Mrs Beckett hinted that she had doubts about a military attack on Iraq when she told the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme that cabinet ministers would want to consider any proposal "in our own sphere and in our own ways". She said: "Conflict in the world does contribute to poverty and also that poverty and environmental degradation go very much hand in hand."