Tens of thousands of delegates are being turned away from the Copenhagen climate summit because of over-subscription.

Having allowed three times more people to register than the 15,000 the centre can hold, the UN climate convention organisers have limited numbers of NGOs to 7,000 on Wednesday, falling to 1,000 on Thursday and just 90 on Friday when heads of state and government are scheduled to attend.

Chief organiser, Yvo de Boer, admitted he was to blame and said: "You can't fit size 12 feet into size six shoes."

Speaking to Newsnight's Gavin Esler, Asah Rahman, of Friends of the Earth, defended the rights of NGOs to attend and said: "We need to have scrutiny of the negotiations and the text."