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Jeremy Corbyn has demanded Boris Johnson stop “bending the knee to corporations” and ban fracking.

Labour say the UK is already set to miss the Government’s own targets for reducing greenhouse gases by 50 years.

And if shale gas exploitation continues at its current rate, a new analysis suggests it will be impossible to hit the target by the end of the century.

Mr Johnson has previously called fracking “glorious news for humanity” and said the UK should “stop pussy-footing around” and get on with drilling for shale gas.

But the Labour leader accused Mr Johnson of “bending the knee” to companies who want to profit from fracking.

(Image: ANDY RAIN/EPA-EFE/REX)

He said: “We need urgent action to tackle the climate emergency, and that means the Prime Minister immediately banning fracking once and for all.

“Instead of bending the knee to a few corporations who profit from extracting fossil fuels from the ground, we need to change course now. It’s the next generation and the world’s poorest who will pay the price if this Conservative government continues to put the interests of a few polluters ahead of people.”

In his inaugural speech to the House of Commons, Mr Johnson promised: “Our United Kingdom of 2050 will no longer make any contribution whatsoever to the destruction of our precious planet brought about by carbon emissions because we will have led the world in delivering that net zero target.”

But exploiting shale gas reserves on the scale envisaged by the Tories under David Cameron would release the equivalent of around 7484 metric tonnes of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, according to Labour.

Even if progress remained at its current rate, the UK would miss that target by nearly 50 years - only barely achieving net-zero by the end of the century.

(Image: Getty Images)

And Labour’s analysis found extracting and burning shale gas on the planned scale would make it impossible to achieve for decades longer.

Mr Johnson has long been a supporter of fracking, calling it “glorious news for humanity” in a 2012 newspaper column.

He wrote: “It doesn’t need the subsidy of wind power. I don’t know whether it will work in Britain, but we should get fracking right away.”

(Image: Daily Mirror)

A year later, he wrote: “We must stop pussy-footing around, and get fracking.

“Even if we have hundreds of fracking pads, they are nothing like as ugly as windmills, and they can be dismantled as soon as the gas is extracted.”

Mr Corbyn added: “Tackling the climate emergency cannot be left to the free market.

“Labour will ban fracking and our Green Industrial Revolution will face the climate emergency head-on and leave no community behind, transforming our country’s energy supply and creating 400,000 good, well-paid jobs across the country.”