Mayor attacks Whitehall green 'inertia'

Ken Livingstone has attacked civil servants for their "inertia and hostility" on the environment.

The mayor of London, seeking re-election for third term in May, said in an interview with the Observer newspaper on Sunday that Whitehall is blocking his attempts to make the capital greener.

He claimed that departments are stopping him from taking more powers on recycling waste and reducing carbon emissions.

And he argued that many mandarins are deliberately doing so in order to secure lucrative business contracts in retirement.

"There's a real inertia and hostility in the civil service," Livingstone said.

"The people in the Department of Energy [now the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform] have done everything possible to block decentralised power.

"All these civil servants know that when they retire there'll be a job for them on the board of British Nuclear Fuels.

"They know Greenpeace isn't going to give them £40,000 a year for doing two days a week on the bloody board, and so they're covering their arse for their future, and advising ministers accordingly."

The mayor, praised as an "inspiration" by prime minister Gordon Brown this week, urged the government to be much bolder on protecting the environment.

"If I were running the country tomorrow, I'd ban plastic bags, I'd ban incandescent light bulbs," he said.

"I'm quite prepared to have a nanny state and live, than we all burn in some catastrophic climate change disaster."

However a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesman said: "Ministers, not civil servants, collectively made the decision not to proceed with legislation that would enable the mayor to set up a single waste authority for London."