THE Scottish Government faces "international disrepute" if it continues to miss its own tough targets for reducing carbon emissions, according to damning internal report.

A secret civil servant review also claimed that hitting the annual climate change target will continue to elude Ministers and called for legislative changes to give the Government more "flexibility".

In 2009, MSPs passed groundbreaking legislation requiring Scotland to make big emissions reductions.

The Government is committed to an 80% fall by 2050 and a 42% decrease by 2020, compared to 1990 levels. Fixed statutory annual targets were also set.

A Climate Change Delivery Board was established by Ministers to oversee delivery of the targets and the legislation attracted plaudits across the world.

However, the annual targets for 2010, 2011 and 2012 were all missed, fuelling criticism that Ministers are not doing enough to reduce the country's carbon footprint.

If the 2020 target is to be met, major cuts in pollution from farming, housing and transport will have to be achieved.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that a Government audit into Ministerial climate change initiatives was completed in November.

The review predicted that the failure to meet the annual targets was likely to be repeated: "While the longer term targets remain achievable, because of the high bar set in the primary legislation, it would appear that with the current trajectory, in the short term at least, Scotland will continue to miss its annual target."

By enacting "such restrictive targets", which have "no scope" for annual variances, the report noted that Scotland's reputation as a "leading light" in emission reduction was under threat.

"The credibility of that status may disappear, along with the buy-in it has previously worked hard to gain from its partners, as annual targets continue to be missed."

One of the recommendations was to amend the 2009 law and its "currently unachievable annual statutory targets".

Flexibility, the audit's authors stated, should be built into the legislative targets, in order to "prevent a repetition of the current Programme's inability to achieve targets year by year and avoid international disrepute".

These concerns were marked as "high", which means "serious risk exposure or weakness requiring urgent consideration".

The audit also raised concerns about members of the Board not having to submit a register of financial interests. "In the interests of openness and transparency, the creation of this control will record information about certain financial and non-financial interests which might reasonably be thought by others to influence actions taken in a members' capacity as an external member of the Board".

Sarah Boyack, Scottish Labour's Rural Affairs and the Environment spokesperson, said: "Scotland's Climate Change targets were the result of a radical cross party commitment to play our part in the largest crisis that humanity currently faces. The SNP is failing to meet those statutory targets not because they are unachievable, but because of a lack of action on transport, housing, energy efficiency and agriculture.

"The solution is not to lower our ambitions, but to raise our game. The SNP likes to talk the talk, but Scotland's reputation will be badly damaged if targets are watered down. The Scottish Government needs to lead the way, not abandon their moral responsibility to the future at the first sign of trouble."

Friends of the Earth Scotland Director Richard Dixon said: "Both environment groups and the Government's own advisors have been telling them that we need much stronger policies if we are to meet our climate targets. In areas like insulating housing we know what to do but we need to invest much more. In transport any serious policy that reduced emissions would be progress.

A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: "We recognise more can be done and Ministers are looking at strengthening measures already in place. However, the Committee on Climate Change have advised that because of continuing changes to the way in which emissions are measured, the targets are becoming harder to reach.

"Without these changes it is likely Scotland would have met its 2012 target. With significantly improved emissions data expected in 2015 and again in 2017 it is important that the challenges this creates are kept under review. "