The uk's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has been insisting that the issue of climate change is "very, very critical', and environment secretary Margaret Beckett claims that the country is a world leader in reducing emissions. Official statistics would, however, have told a different story had it not been for some data tampering. It has now come to light that information revealing alarming levels of pollution in the uk was removed from the Office of National Statistics (ons) report on the environment.

The original figures suggest that since 1990, an 85 per cent and 59 per cent increase in pollutants took place courtesy of the airline industry and freight transport, respectively. But this data was removed from the ons report after pressure from the Department for Transport. The revised document did not mention transport emissions at all.

The unpublished release, titled Rise in greenhouse gas emissions from transport , reportedly states that while overall emissions dropped by 10 per cent between 1990 and 2002, the increase due to the transport sector as a whole was 50 per cent. In fact, as per the report, the 85 per cent increase in pollutants from air transport would have easily soared higher had it not been for the slump in air travel following the September 11 attacks in the us.