Britain has sent an astonishing 210 delegates to the COP30 climate conference in Brazil – generating more than 2.5million air miles.
Meanwhile, the world’s biggest polluters – the US, China, and India – all stayed at home and did not attend.
Opposition parties rounded on the government over the numbers sent to South America – including almost 100 civil servants – and the size of the entourage, which will create an estimated 500 tonnes of CO2. o]
They say it highlights Labour’s hypocrisy while it professes to be engaged in a drive towards Net Zero.
The emissions involved in flying to and from the Amazonian city of Belem easily beats last year’s climate change junket to Baku, when the Mail on Sunday revealed that 470 delegates went, flying 2.3 million miles.
Although this year’s delegation size is smaller than COP29, the 12,000-mile round trip to Brazil is twice as far as it is to Azerbaijan.
It comes as energy secretary Ed Miliband made his SECOND trip to Brazil in less than a week to attend the summit, where he was due to address the conference on Saturday and where he will remain until it finishes next weekend.
The Daily Mail revealed on Tuesday how the Minister for Energy, Security and Net Zero – who had flown out to Brazil earlier this month – returned to the UK last Sunday and flew out again on Thursday for the final week of the conference.
Ed Miliband (pictured right) and other delegates, including UK climate envoy Rachel Kyte (pictured centre) dined at the Hotel Tivoli in Belem
Rooms at the top hotel cost £1,250 a night, after local hotels cashed in on the conference and quadrupled their rates
The hotel where some of the UK’s delegates to the climate conference are staying even has a rooftop swimming pool
Shadow ESNZ minister Claire Coutinho told the Mail on Sunday: ‘Considering none of the leaders of the world’s largest polluters went to COP, you have to ask how we can justify sending scores of civil servants halfway across the world and back on the taxpayer’s dime.
‘It’s astonishing that Ed Miliband could find the time to fly to the latest forest-thinning climate jamboree in Brazil twice in a fortnight but couldn’t be bothered to turn up and vote for my plan to cut everyone’s electricity bills by 20%. That tells you all you need to know about his priorities.’
Richard Tice, deputy leader of Reform UK, said: ’It sounds like quite a lot of taxpayer cash is being spent for this, and the bottom line is that this is one of the greatest hypocritical jamborees.
‘Miliband and his cronies are ignoring the crisis in the UK of job destruction, industry destruction caused by their mad Net stupid Zero policies and instead they are celebrating the destruction of large chunks of Brazilian forest for their little jaunt.
‘No-one voted for this and they should come home and do their job properly. These COPS achieve nothing except cost us all a fortune, they just generate CO2 and hot air, and the British people are sick of it.
‘This should be the last COP anyone goes to, a Reform government would not only scrap Net stupid Zero but we will ban anyone in government including civil servants going to COP conferences.’
Mr Miliband’s two flights alone were 24,000 miles and are thought to have cost taxpayers in excess of £20,000.
The Daily Mail spotted him and his entourage of former XR activists eating out on the top floor of the Tivoli Hotel in Belem – where rooms cost £1,250 a night, after local hotels cashed in and quadrupled rates.
The Hotel Tivoli Maiorana has a 17th floor roof garden restaurant with an uninterrupted view over the Guama River and where Ed Miliband enjoyed drinks and dinner with friends
Officials at the Department of Energy, Security and Net Zero have insisted that ‘in person talks’ work far better than ‘than trying to hold a summit on this scale via Zoom or Teams which would be chaotic’.
They have also said any emissions will be offset but it is not known how.
The United Nations is organising the two-week junket.
The UK delegation is the third largest from Europe – with France having sent the most at 530 and Italy second with 221, while the largest cohort is Brazil with more than 4,000 official registered participants.
According to a ‘league table’, the total number of participants is 51,118 – the second largest COP – and Britain ranks 29th out of 194 countries in terms of the size of its delegation.
The staggering environmental and financial costs will raise questions just two weeks before the budget.
At the start of the summit – which was also attended by Prince William – PM Sir Keir Starmer said Labour was ‘all in’ on Net Zero despite admitting the consensus on climate change in Britain ‘is gone’.
In his speech to the global gathering, the PM vowed the UK under his government would be ‘doubling down on the fight against climate change’.
The cost of Hotel Tivoli (room pictured) has led some to criticise the costs of emissions produced by the UK sending so many delegates to Brazil’s COP30 climate conference
Pictured: Casa Do Saulo in Belem where Rachel Kyte also dined with colleagues
Pictured: the table where Ed Miliband and his friends dined in The Hotel Tivoli
He also claimed that ‘inaction’ would only ‘deepen’ problems of rising bills and energy security as he put forward the case for Labour’s green policies.
They came into government vowing to remove all fossil fuels from the UK’s electricity supply by 2030 as part of a push to boost energy security, curb bills and grow investment.
But both Reform and the Conservatives have said they will repeal any legislation as they view it as costly and ineffective.
However, Mr Miliband insisted in his media interviews of his green campaign, that ‘giving up would be a betrayal’ and he intended to push forward with Net Zero and make Britain a ‘clean energy superpower’ by 2030.
In a YouTube video promoting the UK pavilion at COP30, Mr Miliband said: ’In Britain we are sprinting to clean energy because we believe it’s good for energy security, lower bills, good jobs and growth, living standards and cleaner air for people today.’
Mr Miliband added: ’Don’t believe the doomsters and the naysayers because, as we gather here in Belem, we see countries from across the world taking action.’
He closed the video by urging people who visited the pavilion to ‘grab yourselves a coffee’ adding: ’We pride ourselves on it.’
Critics have said the drive for Net Zero could cost Britain as much as £50 billion year, and on Friday British Gas boss Chris O’Shea warned it could result in ‘unaffordable’ energy bills.
Pictured: Rachel Kyte (left, inset) enjoying drinks and dinner with colleagues. Questions have been raised about the relevance of this year’s summit, with US President Donald Trump missing it along with the leaders of China and India – two of the most polluting countries in the world
Questions have been raised about the relevance of this year’s summit, with US President Donald Trump missing it along with the leaders of China and India – two of the most polluting countries in the world.
Earlier this month, the Tories accused Sir Keir of making an emissions heavy 12,000-mile flight simply to give ‘moral lectures’ with some critics saying the drive for Net Zero will make the UK ‘poorer and colder’.
According to an official list, apart from Mr Miliband, 10 other MPs, including two ministers Katie White and Mary Creagh have flown to Brazil.
Six private secretaries, and more than 30 policy advisers from the DESNZ, the Foreign Office and the Department of the Environment are also in the delegation.
Officials at the DESNZ have told the Daily Mail that the UK’s special representative on climate – Rachel Kyte – will be in Brazil for the entire two weeks of the summit and she is also thought to be staying at the Tivoli Hotel.
Her stay raises the possibility of a £17,500 bill for taxpayers – although one would hope with that length of stay a discount has been arranged.
When the Mail spotted Mr Miliband he was accompanied by Ms Kyte and by Tobias Garnett a former XR rebellion lawyer – the group that repeatedly brought chaos to Britain’s airports and motorway networks in their puritanical green campaign.
Previously Ms Kyte has come in for criticism after she praised an eco-activist who glued herself to the pavement outside Shell’s London HQ.
Pictured: the well-stocked bar at Hotel Tivoli. According to an official list, apart from Mr Miliband, 10 other MPs, including two ministers Katie White and Mary Creagh have flown to Brazil
Inside The Hotel Tivoli. Rachel Kyte’s stay at the hotel alone for a fortnight raises the possibility of a £17,500 bill for taxpayers
And earlier this year it emerged she had flown the equivalent of three times around the world while in the first nine months of starting her job in September 2024.
The majority of Ms Kyte’s flights were business class and have cost taxpayers a total of £38,769 – not including the current Brazil trip.
When the distances of every leg of Ms Kyte’s travel – all of which was on official business – are added up it equates to a little under 76,000 miles, according to website Air Miles Calculator, roughly three times the length of the equator.
Her itinerary, which saw the 60-year-old visit a foreign country every month between October and May, means her personal carbon footprint for the air travel could be as much as 15 metric tonnes.
Something which she previously admitted goes against her ‘green’ credentials – as she told the New Statesman in 2021: ’Having worked internationally for years, and with family on the other side of the Atlantic and friends spread across the world, the carbon footprint wrapped up in my social and professional identity is a source of deep discomfort.’
And a year earlier she told the Cleaning Up Podcast: ’For a long time, I have been on a plane every Sunday night and on a plane many days during the week and I have to say I had angst about that kind of flying from a climate perspective.’
Last Sunday, the day before the COP 30 started, the Mail spotted Ms Kyte enjoying dinner with three other people at the waterside Caso do Saulo restaurant – where the menu draws heavily on the local region and which was named ‘superb’ by the National Geographic.
A DESNZ spokesperson told the Mail on Sunday: ’We make no apologies for representing the British people on the world stage, fighting for investment, jobs, energy security, and action on the climate crisis for Britain.
‘We have strict and robust processes in place to ensure that costs are proportionate.’
