Tony Blair's key achievements in strengthening the UK India relationship include:

• Signing the New Dehli Declaration in Jan 2002 which marked the new, mature relationship between the two countries. A relationship not shaped by sentiment or a shared past but forged in the hard realities of the modern world.

• Visiting India and Pakistan at a time of intense danger following the murderous attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 and escalating military tensions.

• Increasing the British International Development budget to India from £60 million to £300 million. This was a huge shift in recognition that a third of the world's poor live in India and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals there needed to be a new focus on India.

• Being the first leader of the G8 to go on record and support India's bid for a seat on the UN Security Council. He subsequently started inviting India to G8 meetings.

• Resisting protectionist tendencies and actively promoting liberal markets, particularly through the new annual UK - India Investment summits. By the end of 2006 the UK was India's 3rd largest investor cumulatively - after Mauritius, and the USA.

Europe will introduce a surprise new plan today to combat global warming, committing Britain and the rest of the EU to the most ambitious targets in the world. The plan proposes a massive increase in the target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in this decade.

The European Commission is determined to press ahead with the cuts despite the financial turmoil gripping the bloc, even though it would require Britain and other EU member states to impose far tougher financial penalties on their industries than are being considered by other large economies.

The plan, to cut emissions by 30 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020, would cost the EU an extra £33 billion a year by 2020, according to a draft of the Commission’s communication leaked to The Times.

The existing target of a 20 per cent cut is already due to cost £48 billion. The Commission will argue that the lower target has become much easier to meet because of the recession, which resulted in the EU’s emissions falling more than 10 per cent last year as thousands of factories closed or cut production. Emissions last year were already 14 per cent below 1990 levels.

The European Commission is determined to press ahead with the cuts despite the financial turmoil gripping the bloc, even though it would require Britain and other EU member states to impose far tougher financial penalties on their industries than are being considered by other large economies.