The leader of Brighton and Hove’s Green-run council has apologised after flying to the Cop26 climate summit.

Councillor Phelim Mac Cafferty took a plane from London to Glasgow on Friday – shortly before making a speech referencing the urgent need to ‘drive down emissions’.

He later branded the blunder a ‘major failure of my judgement’ and unreservedly apologised.

Mr Mac Cafferty blamed concerns around train reliability for his decision to take a roughly 1 hour 20 minute flight, before joining a major protest march calling for climate action the following day.

He told The Brighton Argus: ‘In the Friday evening just gone, I took a flight from London to Glasgow to attend COP26 where I had been invited to represent the city at a presentation of the Glasgow Declaration on Saturday morning.

‘This decision to fly was a major failure of my judgement which goes against my political group’s pledges and principles and I unreservedly apologise.’

It follows various world leaders, billionaires and other environmentalists flying to the conference, where many repeatedly called for huge cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

He said that he would offset the carbon cost of his journey.

At the beginning of the summit, many delegates took flights to get to the conference amid travel chaos on the public transport network, worsened by a falling tree.

Boris Johnson also flew back to London, on a private jet, after calling for radical action to curb emissions.

That followed his Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, cutting taxes on domestic flights around the UK in his last budget – despite the comparatively huge environmental damage they cause compared with other forms of transport.

Meanwhile, the Queen has taken a 100-mile helicopter trip to Windsor – shortly after calling for people to ‘rise to the challenge’ of tackling the environmental emergency.

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