I'm fed up with snobbish, public school, oyster-eating critics, says Prescott

John Prescott yesterday announced that he is halting his world travels – with a swipe at "snobbish, public school" newspaper editors who have criticised them as junkets.

He said that this month's Earth Summit in Johannesburg had rounded off a five-year mission "to put a great deal more effort into global environmental agreements". He would now be concentrating on "local issues".

Since coming to office, the Deputy Prime Minister has visited more than 40 countries, mainly to mobilise support for the Kyoto treaty on global warming. But he has faced press ridicule and accusations of "junketing", which he puts down to "a kind of snobbery" at "a former ship's steward getting above his station".

He told The Independent on Sunday that the snobbery came from "public school editors who sit on their arses, have their oysters and do bugger all about the environment". About half of national newspaper editors went to public school. Mr Prescott started work at 16 as a trainee steward on ocean liners.

He was speaking from Mumbai, India, where last week he collected an award for his international environmental work presented by the country's Deputy Prime Minister, Lal Krishna Advani. The "Global Award for the Betterment of the World Environment" was given by the Priyadarshini Academy.

Mr Prescott is credited with brokering the Kyoto treaty, and worked behind the scenes at Johannesburg, using the contacts he had built up on his travels, to help get agreement. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, privately thanked him "for making a difference".

Accepting the award, the Deputy Prime Minister said that "Johannesburg was the end of a personal journey. In the past 12 months I have highlighted the importance of the summit. Now I will work to promote sustainable development at home".

He wanted to concentrate on ensuring Labour's pro- gramme of building affordable housing created communities with proper infrastructure and facilities that were not dependent on the car.