Call that net-zero, Sir Keir? Britain has an astonishing 470 DELEGATES at local weather change summit that is a 5,000-mile round-trip flight

Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of hypocrisy after it was revealed the UK sent an incredible 470 delegates to the UN climate change summit in Azerbaijan.

Britain’s huge delegation to the COP29 talks has left a massive carbon footprint – despite Labour‘s zealous drive towards Net Zero – and cost taxpayers millions.

The staggering environmental and financial cost comes despite the summit being deemed ‘no longer fit for purpose’, with leaders of some of the biggest polluting countries, including US President Joe Biden and China‘s President Xi, shunning talks.

The British delegation is bigger than that sent by the US and other major European countries including France, Germany and Italy, according to official figures.

Sir Keir has declared that he wants the UK to have a ‘global leadership’ role in fighting climate change and used this year’s COP in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, to unveil yet another hugely ambitious green target.

But the Prime Minister’s pledge to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 81 per cent by 2035 triggered warnings that people will have to cut back on meat or replace their gas boilers to meet the target.

Meanwhile, a Mail on Sunday investigation can reveal:  

• The British contingent at COP29 includes seven government ministers, eight private secretaries, four backbench MPs and four peers;

• More than 100 civil servants from Ed Miliband’s Energy department are registered to attend, along with more than 30 officials from No 10;
• Both Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy‘s official videographers are also on the list;

• Some UK officials stayed at a luxury hotel where suites cost £800 a night;

• Amid reports of lavish spending, one bar in the summit venue is selling wine at £1,538 a bottle.

Official figures obtained by this newspaper reveal the UK registered 470 delegates. This compared with the 405 from the US, 111 from India, 437 from Italy 325 from Germany and 115 from France, whose President Emmanuel Macron also spurned the talks.

With Baku almost 2,500 miles from London, the British delegation is estimated to have collectively racked up 2.3 million air miles for return trips. Each return flight pumps out at least 0.7 tons of CO2 per passenger, making the delegation’s flights’ total carbon footprint at least 338 tons of CO2.

The UK’s delegation included 354 Government officials or ministers. The remaining 116 included representatives from Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, business figures, policy experts and journalists.

Even Labour figures criticised the size of the delegation. MP and ex-minister Graham Stringer said it was ‘symbolic of the hypocrisy of the Net Zero policy,’ adding: ‘There are more private jets and large jets going to Baku than anywhere else at the moment. It’s a complete waste of money.’

‘They don’t seem to have noticed that although they claim leadership of Net Zero, nobody is following. It would have been a bigger commitment to reducing carbon dioxide if they’d sent [Miliband] and nobody else.’

Reform MP Richard Tice said: ‘This is the Everest of hypocrisy. Public sector servants have wasted millions of pounds on a glorified Net Zero holiday. I could understand 30 or 40 people going but ten times that is absolutely absurd.’

As well as Sir Keir, David Lammy and Ed Milliband, junior ministers Kerry McCarthy, Douglas Alexander, Mary Creagh and Anneliese Dodds were due to attend, along with Gillian Martin, an acting minister in the Scottish Government. The biggest Whitehall department represented is Miliband’s, with 118 delegates. The Foreign Office registered 79 officials and No 10 registered 32.

The delegates included Ben Barnett, the Prime Minister’s ‘content designer and videographer’, and Isaac Mayne, who is the ‘head of creative’ at the Foreign Office. Both produce slick promotional films for the Government. Also on the list was Downing Street’s chief photographer Simon Dawson and head of broadcast Calum Masters.

Even the UK Space Agency registered three delegates, while two officials were due to attend from NHS England and three from the Department of Health.

Labour MPs Liam Byrne and Barry Gardiner have attended, along with the SNP’s Chris Law and Lib Dem Pippa Heyling.

Yet last week a number of senior global figures and environmental experts, including former UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, said the COP process was ‘no longer fit for purpose’.

The MoS can reveal that some of the British officials stayed at the Qafqaz Baku City Hotel, where an executive suite this weekend cost almost £800 a night. Even a standard double room is almost £400.

Meanwhile, online reports last week claimed Baku’s fish markets had run out of caviar, which costs up to £63 an ounce, because of the summit. John Patterson, chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce in Azerbaijan, was yesterday pictured on Instagram tucking into the delicacy at a stand hosted by an Azerbaijan investment firm.

A total of 66,778 delegates are expected in Baku, a huge jump on the 16,000 who travelled to Bonn, Germany, for COP23 in 2017.

This year’s talks, which are due to finish next Sunday, started with controversy when Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, declared fossil fuels ‘a gift from God’. And the country’s deputy energy minister was secretly filmed promoting oil and gas deals on the sidelines.

Data from flight tracking website FlightRadar24 revealed that 65 private jets landed in Baku in the days before the summit kicked off – more than twice as many as in the same week last year.

A UK Government spokesperson said last night: ‘Through our mission to become a clean energy superpower, we will protect bill payers and boost the UK’s energy independence.

‘It is in Britain’s national interest to attend these summits. Any carbon footprint is dwarfed by the carbon prize of delivering our agenda.’