'Hypocrite' Cameron defends car choice

David Cameron has confirmed that he opted for a large luxury car, rather than a less polluting model, when he decided to ditch his government-provided vehicle.

His admission came as he announced plans to commit the Conservatives to targets that would require cuts in the emissions of greenhouse gases from traffic on British roads.

As leader of the opposition, Cameron is entitled to a government car.

But he has decided to hand back his Vauxhall Omega and instead leased commercially a more environmentally-friendly Lexus GS 450h with a "hybrid" engine which gives off less carbon in exhaust.

However, he decided to turn down a government-provided Toyota Prius, whose emissions at 104g per kilometre are significantly lower than the 186g given off by the Lexus.

Cameron said that he had opted for the larger car because the Prius was not big enough to carry all his entourage, meaning he would often have had to take two cars on visits.

"My current car that the government gave me is 276g, so the car I am getting is going to be a huge decline from that," Cameron told Sky News.

"My problem is that often when I go on tour, I have a lot of people in the car with me and I found on the tour when I used a Prius it meant we had to have two cars rather than one, so I don't think it would be very good for the environment."

Cameron is to commit the Tories to a target of cutting emissions to 100g a kilometre from new cars by 2022 and from all cars on British roads by 2030.

A Labour Party spokesman said Cameron was "a complete hypocrite".