BNP leader Griffin will attend climate summit

The leader of the British National Party (BNP), Nick Griffin, is to represent the European Parliament at the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen next week.

Mr Griffin, who was elected to the European Parliament in June, confirmed that he would travel to Copenhagen as a representative of the parliament's environmental committee. A spokesman for the party said he hoped to expose the "somewhat dodgy" science behind the climate-change movement.

The far-right politician has repeatedly condemned those who warn of the consequences of climate change, most recently last week when he denounced them as "cranks". In a speech to the European Parliament, he argued that climate change had arisen from "an Orwellian consensus ... based not on scientific agreement, but on bullying, censorship and fraudulent statistics".

Other parties played down the the impact that Mr Griffin was likely to have. Ed Miliband, the Climate Change Secretary, said Mr Griffin would "not be part of the formal Copenhagen negotiations and ... will not be listened to by anyone with any credibility".

However, the BNP is likely to see Mr Griffin's presence as a major publicity coup, as it helps the party show that its policies extend beyond race and immigration. But Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green Party, said yesterday: "The parliament sadly doesn't get the right to really influence decisions at all. So this idea thatNick Griffin is going to have influence on what happens in Copenhagen is a myth."