Greenpeace, the Green Alliance, the World Wildlife Fund and Friends of the Earth simultaneously pulled out of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s consultation on nuclear power.

The groups accused the Government of providing consultation materials for the public that are “misleading, inaccurate and biased towards nuclear power”.

Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said: “This new consultation is a sham and a fraud. It manages somehow to be just as skewed as the last, and seems to have been designed to ignore the views of the public while simultaneously telling people what they should think. This government can’t get nuclear power past a fair consultation because the policy is environmentally, financially and scientifically flawed. That’s why ministers have gone for a stitch-up.”