The Government will make it legally-binding for the UK to establish a zero emissions target, the Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom has said.

Ms Leadsom said it was a case of "not whether but how we do it" following the record Paris climate change agreement in November.

Responding to former Labour leader Ed Miliband's call to put the target into law, Ms Leadsom told Parliament on Monday: "The Government believes that we will need to take the step of enshrining the Paris goal for net zero emissions in UK law.

"The question is not whether but how we do it."

However, she said it was too early to lock the Government into a target date: "There is an important set of questions to be answered before we do."

Mr Miliband earlier insisted during the Energy Bill Debate that the hottest February ever on record proved the urgent need to set a date for the target and put it into law.

Mr Miliband has proposed an amendment to the Bill which would compel the Government to establish a zero emissions year.

It has the support of some Tory backbenchers, Liberal Democrat, Green, Plaid Cymru and SDLP MPs, alongside business backing from Aviva, GSK, Unilever, Kingspan, Kingfisher and the We Mean Business coalition.

During the Bill's report stage, he said: "2015 was the hottest year on record ... each of the last five months the record for global temperatures has been broken in every month with February being an awful record breaker.

"And then this other fact that atmospheric concentrations of CO2, and it is hard to get your head around this, are now higher than they have been for at least a million years because that's what the scientists tell us.

"That is the sense of urgency that I think we should have about this issue."

He went on: "My proposal I believe makes economic, moral and political sense.

"It makes economic sense because we'll have to get to zero emissions eventually and since we know it will be tough, we need to start planning now.

"We already know some of the tools that we will need and we don't know all of the tools we necessarily need.

"We need clean energy supplies, we need a revolution in the household sector, we need, and this speaks to what (SNP MP Callum McCaig) said, we need carbon capture and storage so we can trap remaining emissions.

"We need reforestation and we need other technologies which are in the early stages of development.

"But here's the crucial point - we need to start the work now so we can make zero emissions happen at least cost."

Ms Leadsom said she is waiting for the Energy and Climate Change Committee to report back on the implications of the agreements made at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in November.

She agreed to discuss the the committee's recommendations with Mr Miliband once the report is published later this year.

She told him: "This is an example once again of the house demonstrating on a cross-party basis a determination to tackle climate change, as we showed in the Climate Change Act.

"We are determined to build on the momentum of Paris, and I believe our positive response to you is a clear example of it. I hope on that basis you will agree to withdraw it (the proposed amendment)."