Government accused

The Government was accused last night of paying lip service to its pledge to make all new schools carbon-neutral. Paul Holmes, a Liberal Democrat on the Commons Education Committee, told The Times that targets set for schools’ emissions were “said by all expert witnesses to be so low they were almost meaningless”. The Government said six months ago that all schools built under the £45 billion Building Schools for the Future programme would have no carbon footprint. But yesterday it said it could not afford to build carbon-neutral schools.