David Miliband really is a cheeky sod. Last week we learned that the environment secretary doesn’t recycle his own rubbish, and has managed to piss off practically every farmer in the country by losing their lovely subsidy cheques down the back of the DEFRA sofa.

Now it turns out that he has:-

• managed to cost NHS hospitals a fortune by making them buy carbon emissions permits
• handed big oil companies a small fortune on a plate by giving them bucketloads of said permits
• when challenged about it the Government simply lied to parliament* to cover it up.

Back in the summer Miliband penned a breathless piece claiming that “David Cameron’s hostility to Europe makes a mockery of his claimed green credentials”. Today the Government’s very own £105 million-a-year Carbon Trust Quango says that Milliband’s beloved EU Emissions Tax is a total fiasco.