"Incontinent" Brown pledged another £700m today, to tackle climate change

Gordon Brown's scorched earth policy continued apace this morning. A week ago he found £800m to spend on helping developing nations combat climate change. Today he doubled that, announcing that Britain will be committing £1.5bn to the same ends. By the time the Copenhagen circus has ended who knows how much he will have pledged.

Will this money be new money and therefore be added to Britain's £178bn deficit? Or will it be money taken from the existing aid budget and therefore denied to anti-malaria and other more urgent programmes?   This paper put together by Bjorn Lomborg recommends a far-reaching programme to tackle malnutrition in Africa. It is transformational in its reach and that is the kind of project that UK aid money should be funding.

The Tories are waiting to announce their policy on this issue until Copenhagen is concluded but speaking on the phone to Andrew Mitchell a few moments ago the Tory aid spokesman accused Brown of "fiscal incontinence" in the way he was spraying around figures from one week to the next without explaining either from where the money would come or for what specifically it would be used.

Tim Montgomerie

> Watch a BBC report on Brown's announcement.

3.35pm: This statement, just landed in the in box, from Greg Clark MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is discouraging: “It is important to have agreed that adaptation funding is necessary, but it is vital that participants at Copenhagen now agree on an international financial mechanism that can dependably result in the necessary flow of funds.”