Foreign intelligence service MI6 will spy on other nations to check whether they are abiding by their climate change pledges, one of Britain’s top spy chiefs has said.

The head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), Richard Moore, indicated that the agency’s “green spying” could target large industrial nations, claiming that alleged man-made climate change is “foremost international foreign policy item for this country and for the planet”.

Mr Moore, known as C, told Times Radio according to The Telegraph on Sunday: “Our job is to shine a light in places where people might not want it shone and so clearly we are going to support what is the foremost international foreign policy agenda item for this country and for the planet, which is around the climate emergency, and of course we have a role in that space.”

He added: “Where people sign up to commitments on climate change, it is perhaps our job to make sure that what they are really doing reflects what they have signed up to,” he added.

The remarks come as Britain is set to host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.

Last week, President of the United States of America Joe Biden announced at a climate summit his pledge to halve emissions by 2030 after rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement shortly after taking office.

While British Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced the UK will slash emissions by 68 per cent by 2030 and by 78 per cent by 2035, with Sky News — which hosts the twice-daily-aired climate show every weekday — lauding it as “the most ambitious among leading economies”.

Prime Minister Johnson is likely to forge close ties with Biden during the G7 summit in Cornwall, England, in June, which will be the American Democrat’s first foreign trip as president.

In Biden’s first call to Boris Johnson in November, the pair discussed their “shared priorities”, according to the British prime minister, including “tackling climate change, to promoting democracy and building back better from the pandemic”.

Biden and Johnson have already discussed a “green alternative” to Belt and Road, which would see Western nations fund green infrastructure projects in the third world, to counter Chinese expansionism.

“One of the things I suggested we do is — we talked about China and the competition they’re engaging in the Belt and Road Initiative. And I suggested we should have, essentially, a similar initiative coming from the democratic states, helping those communities around the world,” Biden said of the plans last month.

British intelligence agencies have been increasingly progressive in outlook in recent years. In February, it was claimed that MI6, which is Britain’s equivalent of the CIA, had begun recruiting foreign nationals as spies.

While MI5, the domestic national security agency, has joined the Facebook-owned photo-sharing site Instagram. Its head Ken McCallum saying the spy network was trying to bust out of the James Bond stereotype and that the social platform gave them an opportunity for “finding new ways to tap into diversity and creativity of UK life”.