By Charles Clover, Environment Editor (Filed: 14/12/2002)

Tony Blair, who has rebuked President George W Bush for reneging on an international agreement to tackle global warming, has broken his own government's rules by installing an air-conditioning system that is grossly damaging to the environment.

The system installed in January last year in No 10's first-floor reception rooms contains hydrofluorocarbons, chemicals that warm the atmosphere 3,000 times more per molecule than carbon dioxide.

A Downing Street spokesman yesterday tried to imply that a parliamentary written answer to the Labour MP Jane Griffiths did not mean that HFCs had been installed. But industry sources confirmed that HFCs were the substance used by the contractors.

The HFCs were specified and installed under the supervision of the consultant Steve Willock, of the John Melville Partnership, three months after HFCs were outlawed in the Government's strategy to tackle global warming.

Doug Parr of Greenpeace said: "Downing Street is using HFCs but trying to mislead us into thinking they are not. Yet again Tony Blair has been caught looking like a hypocrite.

"We've heard a lot of environmental rhetoric over the years but there's been precious little action. The whole of the Government's commitment to environmental responsibility must be questioned if there is no lead from the top.

"Mr Blair likes to be seen as a world statesman, but why should other leaders take him seriously when he can't deliver a simple policy in his own back yard?"

Conservationists say the disclosure casts doubt on the entire government strategy on environmentally friendly procurement, the subject of a document two weeks ago, and means that No 10 joins the Treasury and the Home Office in breaking the Government's own climate change strategy.

This says HFCs "should be used only where other safe, technically feasible, cost effective and more environmentally acceptable alternatives do not exist".

The Home Office has said it cannot comply with the Government's rules as its new HQ, on the site of the former Department of the Environment buildings, is being built under the private finance initiative. The Treasury claimed it was entitled to use HFCs in its refit because it was a listed building.

The Government has announced that a refit of the International Maritime Organisation building on the Albert Embankment and the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre will be carried out using ammonia, one of the two alternative refrigerants.

Paul Blacklock, of Calor Gas, one of the companies trying to create a market in hydrocarbon refrigerants, another alternative to HFCs, said: "This is the latest in a long list of occasions of the Government not doing what it says it believes in."

A Downing Street spokesman refused to add to the written answer given to Miss Griffiths. The MP, a former employee of GCHQ who became interested in government procurement when she found that GCHQ had installed a similarly damaging air-conditioning system, asked what coolant was used in the system at No 10.

Mr Blair replied: "All coolants in Downing Street comply with the UK Climate Change Programme and all relevant European standards on the use of HFCs and safety in the workplace."

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2002