MPs to rock climate concert

The one-off gig to back Friends of the Earth’s The Big Ask Campaign, aims to highlight Government plans to leave aviation and shipping emissions out of the forthcoming Climate Change Bill.

Liberal Democrat Lembit Opik could be picking up a few performing tips from Cheeky Girl partner Gabriela Irimia before taking part in the concert on Monday.

The group, dubbed The Aviators, also includes Conservative MP Anne Milton and Labour’s Emily Thornberry and Ian Cawsey.

Ex-Runrig band member Peter Wishart, now a Scottish National Party MP for Perth, will draw on his experiences of rocking Top of the Pops with his former band to complete the unlikely five-piece.

To urge fellow MPs to vote in favour of including aviation and shipping emissions in the Climate Change Bill, the band will perform a rendition of the John Denver classic Leaving on a Jet Plane.

Mr Wishart said: “As a group, we’re hardly Johnny’s most rock ‘n’ roll support act, but this is a gig with a very clear political point. We’re ditching party divisions to literally sing from the same hymn sheet.”

Mr Opik added: “Hundreds of my constituents have contacted me about The Big Ask campaign and I think it would be a great travesty to repay them with a law too weak to be compatible with stopping climate change.”

Borrell will play an acoustic set to a select group of competition winners and representatives of all industries in the UK except the aviation and shipping industries in a bid to highlight the unfairness of the proposed law.

The Big Ask was launched by Friends of the Earth in 2005 calling on Government to introduce legal curbs on CO2 emissions and was backed by tens of thousands of supporters.

Kate Martin