UK Politics

Britain’s major trade unions are collectively urging the government to “get round” the negotiating table to try to find a resolution, 24 hours ahead of the biggest strike action on the rail network for decades.In a letter to Grant Shapps, the general secretaries of 14 unions – which between them represent millions of workers, including civil servants, shopworkers, teachers and NHS staff – have warned that ministers must stop their “attempts to divide workers”. The general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Frances O’Grady, who is one of the signatories of the letter, also accused the government of “fanning the flames” of the dispute, and insisted ministers had the power to help find a settlement.It comes after Mr Shapps, the transport secretary, warned the country’s biggest rail union that the disruption would be a “huge act of self-harm” for the industry, and claimed that the unions had been “gunning” for action that would “punish millions of innocent people”.Mr Shapps also said that calls by the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) for ministers to intervene in talks over workers’ conditions were a “stunt”, adding that only the union and the employer would be able to settle the dispute.Without an 11th-hour resolution, members of the RMT working for Network Rail and for 13 train operators will walk out this week, on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. They will be joined on the first day of action by workers on the London Underground.In the letter to Mr Shapps, the general secretaries of 14 trade unions, including the National Education Union (NEU), Unison, Unite, GMB, and the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU), said: “The trade union movement will never accept attempts to divide workers from one another.“With household bills and prices skyrocketing, of course workers will seek to defend jobs, pay and conditions. The right to withdraw your labour is a fundamental British liberty.”Calling on the government to intervene, they added: “Our rail unions are seeking a negotiated settlement to this dispute, and we urge you to get round the table with unions and employers to help deliver a fair resolution.”Ms O’Grady also claimed that ministers are “desperate to pitch worker against worker” in the bitter dispute.In recent days, individual cabinet ministers, along with the Conservative Party, have attempted to brand the industrial action “Labour’s strikes” in social media posts, claiming the action will “prevent doctors, nurses and patients getting to hospital”.But Ms O’Grady said: “Rather than fanning the flames of this dispute, the government should be working in good faith to find a negotiated settlement. They have the power to do this.”In a separate letter to Mr Shapps, Labour’s shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh said “you cannot wash your hands of responsibility”. She added: “The only way to sort this out is for your government to stop boycotting the talks and get around the table. With just 24 hours to go, it’s time to show some leadership to avoid the strike.”Speaking on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, however, Mr Shapps said: “The trade unions know that only the trade union and the employer can settle this. I will not cut across that.”Grant Shapps says RMT union are ‘gunning’ for strikesHe claimed: “This is a stunt at the 11th hour by the union, suddenly coming forward and saying ‘We need to negotiate with the government now,’ even though this last month they told me they wouldn’t be seen dead negotiating with the government.”The cabinet minister added: “I think it is a huge act of self-harm to go on strike at the moment. I don’t believe the workers are anywhere as militant as their unions, who are leading them up the garden path. They are gunning for this strike. It is completely unnecessary.”But Tory MP Jake Berry, the chair of the influential Northern Research Group (NRG) of backbench Conservatives, urged the government and other parties to “get around the table” in order to prevent the “huge negative impact” of the planned strike action.RMT union boss accuses Grant Shapps of ‘fabricating’ details over talksHe told Times Radio: “What’s the alternative? The only way this will be sorted out is by people sitting down with, I don’t know, cold beer and sandwiches. I don’t know if they still do that any more. But sitting down and sorting this out.”A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “The unions know negotiations over pay and working practices don’t happen with the government – they happen with the employers of the people they represent.“In this case, that’s Network Rail and the train operating companies, so even an hour spent talking to ministers would just be time they could be speaking to the people they really need to.“Ministers remain extremely close to the issues on both sides of this dispute and the latest in the ongoing discussions taking place. We would once again urge the unions to prioritise talks and call off these unnecessary strikes.”On Sunday, Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the RMT, insisted the union had no choice but to act given that the train operators had still not made a pay offer when talks were adjourned on Thursday.“What else are we to do? Are we to plead? Are we to beg? We want to bargain for our futures. We want to negotiate,” he told Sky News.He also suggested there would be more strikes if there was no settlement, and warned that unions representing other sectors across the country could ballot “because people can’t take it any more”.“We’ve got people doing full-time jobs who are having to take state benefits and use food banks. That is a national disgrace,” he said.Kevin Courtney, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union, representing teachers, also told The Observer at the weekend that his union planned to ballot its members unless it recieved a pay offer much closer to the rate of inflation by Wednesday. More

Conservative campaign leaflets and advertising for the upcoming by-elections reportedly omit any mention of Boris Johnson.A pamphlet distributed by Helen Hurford, the Tory candidate in Tiverton and Honiton, featured no reference to her party on the front page.The Telegraph reported that inside the pamphlet the Conservative party is not mentioned until page four, while the prime minister is not mentioned at all.A pamphlet distributed by Nadeem Ahmed, the Tory candidate in Wakefield, also featured no reference to Mr Johnson nor photos of him, the paper said.It also said six Facebook advertisements shared by Ms Hurford do not mention the prime minister and only refer to the Tory party to declare it as the source of funding.The prime minister’s reputation in the wake of the Partygate scandal has haunted the two by-election campaigns so far. Ms Hurford was recently booed by a crowd when she sidestepped a question about Mr Johnson’s moral character. She recently declined to say if he was honest during an interview with The Guardian. “I think Boris thinks that he is an honest person,” she said.When asked byThe Telegraph if she was a “Boris Johnson Conservative” she said “I’m a Helen Hurford Conservative”.In Wakefield, the Labour party said their most successful advert of the campaign has been one referrring to the recent vote of confidence in Mr Johnson in which 40 per cent of Conservative MPs voted against him. It comes as Tories have warned that defeats in the two by-elections on Thursday would further damage Mr Johnson’s authority as leader.MPs from across the party told The Independent they were privately expecting a “big defeat” in Wakefield, where a recent poll by JL Partners put Labour 20 points ahead in the West Yorkshire seat.A senior Tory MP said the loss of Tiverton and Honiton, where the party has a large majority, “would be a disaster”.Voters head to the polls in Yorkshire and Devon less than two weeks after the prime minister narrowly survived a confidence vote called amid an ivestigation into whether he misled parliament over his knowledge of parties in Downing Street during the Covid lockdown.Ms Hurford refused to say which side she would have taken in the confidence vote, labelling the question “irrelevant”.The Tiverton and Honiton candidate is defending a 24,239 majority that would require a 20-point-plus swing to the Lib Dems for the Tories to lose the seat. The Conservatives however fear a loss in Devon is well within likelihood.A senior MP said most of his colleagues expected a Lib Dem victory. “Look at North Shropshire. It’s a further opportunity for people to send a message to Downing Street that they are not happy,” they warned.The same MP said Wakefield was “gone, gone, gone”. Speaking to The Independent, polling expert Professor Sir John Curtice agreed, suggesting the party’s 3,358 majority was a “write-off”.He said it was “very difficult for any government to defend, and it doesn’t matter if it’s red wall, blue wall, pink wall, or purple wall, you only need a 3.5 per cent swing”. He added: “It should be inconceivable that the government hangs on to it.” More

Gordon Brown has predicted Boris Johnson will abandon a planned hike in corporation tax in the autumn, as he hit out at a government lurching from “crisis to crisis”.Issuing a warning about the potential for a “global recession”, the former Labour prime minister urged Mr Johnson to gather world leaders to establish a plan to tackle issues on food supply and inflation.Speaking after the Bank of England forecast inflation to reach 11 per cent in the autumn, Mr Brown also demanded ministers present a “fourth Budget” to parliament in 2022 to ease poverty and inflationary pressures.“There is no plan, there is no programme of action,” he claimed. “The government is going from crisis to crisis and scandal to scandal, we cannot see a way out of this, we will have pain now and pain later.“What we need is minimising pain now and maximising gain later.”Pressed on BBC’s Sunday Morning whether tax cuts are a way out of the crisis, Mr Brown replied: “I suspect that what the government will have to do in the autumn is abandon their corporate tax rise.“I suspect they’ll not be able to go ahead with their fuel tax rise because that’s another pressure on inflation.”Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, announced last year corporation tax would rise to 25 per cent from April 2023 – from a current rate of 19 per cent. However, there have been reports of a clash between the prime minister and the chancellor on the issue.Mr Brown said: “But what you need to do is look at a fair set of answers. The first thing they’ve go to do, I’ll be honest about this, I’m shocked by the fact so many families and children are going to be forced into poverty during this winter.”He said despite the chancellor’s interventions earlier this month, including one-off payments to those on benefits, millions of families will be in poverty.Mr Brown, who was prime minister during the global financial crash in 2008, said Mr Johnson really “ought to be getting world leaders and they should concoct a plan” to bring down oil prices, get food supply running around the world, and control inflation.“We’ve got protectionism, we’ve got war in Europe, we’ve got a form of jingoism and nationalism in different countries pursuing their own selfish interests, and we’re in danger of having a global recession.”The former PM’s comments also come as thousands of protesters marched in central London calling for further government action to ease the cost of living crisis and a “decent pay rise” for public sector workers. More

Labour frontbencher Lisa Nandy has dismissed as “absolute nonsense” claims that Sir Keir Starmer is making plans for who will succeed him as party leader in the event that he is forced to resign.The shadow levelling up secretary, who ran for the leadership in 2020, said she had held “no conversations about succession” with the Labour leader, as it was reported that he had met with members of the shadow cabinet to discuss the plans.Sir Keir has repeatedly insisted that no lockdown rules were broken when he had beer and a curry with staff after a day of campaigning in the run-up to the 2021 local elections, and is currently awaiting the outcome of a Durham Police inquiry into the incident.But the Labour leader and his deputy, Angela Rayner, who have called on Boris Johnson to step down as prime minister over lockdown-busting parties held at No 10, have both made clear that they will resign if issued with a fixed penalty notice.On Friday, a Labour spokesperson confirmed that Sir Keir and Ms Rayner had returned questionnaires to Durham Constabulary.Meanwhile, according to The Sunday Times, Sir Keir has begun making contingency plans in case he is issued with a fine, and is reported to have met with ambitious members of the shadow cabinet to urge them to put campaign teams in place.The newspaper said he told friends: “I will not let this party become a basket case again. I will not let our hard-won gains be squandered, so we will need to be ready in the unlikely event the worst comes to the worst.”A Labour leadership source disputed the claims, telling The Independent: “We’re confident Keir and Angela broke no rules, and that it will be proven.“The only planning we’re doing is for Keir and Angela to lead the party into government at the next general election.”Asked about the reports, and whether Sir Keir had held any conversations with her on the matter, Ms Nandy told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme: “It’s absolute nonsense.“No, he hasn’t, and I’ve spoken to him twice in the last couple of days about how we persuade this government to lift a finger to avert a crisis on the railways, and about how we can [reverse] the huge cuts to local government funding.”She added: “No, I’m not worried he’s been talking to anybody about succession planning, because I know he’s been talking to all of us about how we rid this country of a government has held us back over the last 12 years.”Pressed again on BBC’s Sunday Politics about whether she had been involved in any succession planning with the Labour leader, Ms Nandy repeated it was “absolute nonsense” and said she had had “no conversation with Keir Starmer about succession”.The remarks came as former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown suggested Sir Keir should “ignore” anonymous briefings in the media this week from shadow cabinet ministers that he is “boring voters to death”.Mr Brown said the Labour leader would make a “great prime minister”, adding: “What’s exciting about the possibility of Keir Starmer’s leadership is he will have a plan for Britain.“He will show how we can get back growth. He will show how we can get living standards rising again, and he will show how we can have a fairer society that deals with problems like climate change.” More

Grant Shapps has dismissed growing calls for the government to get involved in talks over rail strikes as a “stunt”, amid growing tensions over the biggest industrial action on the network in decades.Condemning the industrial action set to take place this week, the transport secretary warned the country’s biggest rail union it would be a “huge act of self-harm”, and claimed they had been “gunning” for action.He also suggested freight services could be reduced to 50 per cent of normal levels due to the disruption expected by the strikes at Network Rail and 13 other train operators on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.The transport secretary’s remarks came after the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) confirmed over the weekend the strikes would go ahead after the failure to resolve a bitter dispute over workers’ conditions.Despite the government facing calls to intervene to prevent the strikes — including from a senior Tory MP — Mr Shapps said: “The trade unions know that only the trade union and the employer can settle this. I will not cut across that.”Speaking on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge programme, he claimed: “This is a stunt at the 11th hour by the union, suddenly coming forward and saying ‘we need to negotiate with the government now’ even though this last month they told me they wouldn’t be seen dead negotiating with the government”.“I think it is a huge act of self-harm to go on strike at the moment,” the cabinet minister added. “I don’t believe the workers are anywhere as militant as their unions who are leading them up the garden path. They are gunning for this strike. It is completely unnecessary.”But the Tory MP Jake Berry, the chair of the influential Northern Research Group (NRG) of backbench Conservatives, urged the government and all parties to “get around the table” and prevent the “huge negative impact” of strike action.He told Times Radio: “What’s the alternative? The only way this will be sorted out is by people sitting down with, I don’t know, cold beer and sandwiches. I don’t know if they still do that anymore. But sitting down and sorting this out.”Labour’s Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling up secretary, also said ministers needed to step in to prevent the network “grinding to a halt” in a dispute over pay, conditions and job losses.She said: “During the pandemic they [the government] took the right to negotiate back from train operating companies, so they’re the only people who can resolve this and yet they’re not prepared to.“The biggest problem that this country has is not militant workers, it’s a militant government”.Lisa Nandy says the government has led the country to ‘chaos’Mick Lynch, the general secretary of RMT, stressed the the union had no choice but to act after the train operators had still not made a pay offer when talks adjourned on Thursday.“What else are we to do? Are we to plead? Are we to beg? We want to bargain for our futures. We want to negotiate,” he told Sky News.In an escalation of tensions, Mr Lynch also accused the transport secretary of an “entire fabrication” over claims about the union’s attendance at negotiations over rail strikes.Minutes earlier, Mr Shapps said his “big complaint” was that on Saturday Mr Lynch and the RMT “walked out” of talks and instead attended a cost-of-living crisis organised by the Trade Union Congress (TUC).RMT union boss accuses Grant Shapps of ‘fabricating’ details over talksBut Mr Lynch hit back: “We’re available to negotiate, this nonsense that we didn’t attend negotiations yesterday, which Grant Shapps has said, is an entire fabrication.“We left Network Rail on Friday night at around half past seven and they said to us, ‘we are prepared to meet you on Sunday’.“They never mentioned any negotiations on Saturday because they were going to speak to the Department for Transport about what they might be able to discuss with us.“He’s making it up, what he’s saying is untrue, we didn’t attend a rally instead of negotiations. There were no negotiations scheduled and the train operating companies have not spoken to me or any of my officials since Thursday at lunchtime.” More

Sir Keir Starmer has accused Boris Johnson and the transport secretary Grant Shapps of “stoking divisions” over nationwide rail strikes set to take place this week.The Labour leader will accuse the government of “pouring petrol on the fire” over its handling of the dispute with unions, instead of attempting to take the heat out of the row.His remarks come after the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) confirmed on Saturday the strike action would go ahead after the failure of talks to resolve a bitter dispute over workers’ conditions.Union members at Network Rail and 13 train operators will stage 24-hour walkouts on 21, 23 and 25 June, with disruption also possible for the rest of the week. There will also be industrial action on London Underground services on 21 June.Over the weekend, the chief executive of the industry group UKHospitality, Kate Nicholls, suggested the tourism, leisure and theatre industries were “looking at an economic hit of over a billion pounds”.In a speech to the Labour Local Government Association conference, Sir Keir will claim the prime minister and Mr Shapps “want the strikes to go ahead”, adding: “They want the country to grind to a halt so they can feed off the division.”Referencing adverts posted by the Conservatives labelling the industrial action “Labour’s strikes”, Sir Keir will say: “Instead of spending their time this week around the negotiating table, they are designing attack ads.“Instead of grown-up conversations to take the heat out of the situation, they are pouring petrol on the fire. Instead of bringing people together in the national interest, they are stoking division in their political interest.”He will add: “Businesses will struggle with freight. School exams will be hard to get to. Hospital appointments [will be] missed. That’s why I’ve said the strikes should not go ahead.”Network Rail bosses were set to hold last-ditch talks with the RMT on Sunday in the hope of averting the strike, but union bosses indicated there was little prospect of a breakthrough.Confirming the strike action would go ahead, RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said on Saturday: “Despite the best efforts of our negotiators, no viable settlements to the disputes have been created.”He added: “It has to be restated that the source of these disputes is the decision by the Tory government to cut £4bn of funding from our transport systems – £2bn from national rail and £2bn from Transport for London.“As a result of this transport austerity imposed by the government, the employing companies have taken decisions to savage the Railways Pension Scheme and the Transport for London scheme, cutting benefits, making staff work longer and poorer in retirement, while paying increased contributions.”Ahead of the strikes, Mr Shapps issued a statement saying the government had repeatedly urged the RMT not to press ahead with the strike action, which will “cause misery” for the public.He added: “Many people who do not get paid if they can’t get to work face losing money at a time they simply can’t afford to. Children sitting exams will face the extra distraction of changing their travel plans. And vulnerable people trying to attend long-awaited hospital appointments may have no choice but to cancel.“By carrying out this action, the RMT is punishing millions of innocent people, instead of calmly discussing the sensible and necessary reforms we need to make in order to protect our rail network.”Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng accused unions of “bribing” workers to go on strike after some increased hardship payments for staff who will lose pay by walking out.He was quoted in the Sunday Telegraph as saying: “It’s obvious that trade union chiefs have been quietly amassing a war chest to effectively bribe workers into unleashing a summer of strike chaos.” More

Thousands of protesters marched in London calling for government action to ease the cost of living crisis.The TUC, which coordinated hundreds of coaches to bring demonstrators to the capital from across the UK, called for measures including “a decent pay rise for public-sector workers” and a £15 minimum wage.Union leaders gave speeches in Parliament Square, demanding higher wages, increased taxes on the rich and better working conditions.They also expressed support for the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union rail strikes next week.Onlookers reported a heavy police presence, with around 10 police vans.Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, said: “I have seen the transport secretary Grant Shapps has threatened rail workers that they will strike themselves out of a job.“Well you are wrong Mr Shapps: if you keep stirring, come the next election, you will be out of a job.”Ms O’Grady added: “Let me say this to Boris Johnson: don’t you dare shift the blame for inflation on to working people.“Don’t you dare, not after a decade of austerity, privatisation and pay cuts. Don’t you dare tell working families we have to put up with more pain.“What about bankers’ bonuses? What about the boardroom raking it in? What about corporate profits? It is time to raise taxes on wealth, not workers.”Protester Ben Robinson, who works for a housing charity in south London, said: “We’ve got residents who are coming into our offices who are choosing between feeding their own kids, not themselves, their own kids, and paying rent and heating, and that is just not a choice that anyone should have to face in the fourth-biggest economy in the world.“And the growing disparity between the very richest in society and the other 99 per cent of people who just don’t have enough to get by.”Frankie Brown, 24, a teacher, said: “Every day I have got kids in my class who are going home to homes where they don’t have enough to eat.”The TUC says research suggests workers have lost almost £20,000 since 2008 because pay has not kept pace with inflation.But the government on Saturday warned workers cannot expect pay rises to keep up with the soaring cost of living.Treasury chief secretary Simon Clarke said pay demands which seek to match the rate of inflation risked creating a 1970s-style wage-price spiral, pushing prices in the shops even higher.The Treasury insisted it had “stepped in to ease the burden” of the cost of living crisis.A government spokesperson said: “As part of our £37bn support package we’re also saving the typical employee over £330 a year through the imminent national insurance tax cut, are allowing universal credit claimants to keep £1,000 more of what they earn and have made the biggest cut to all fuel duty rates ever.”Additional reporting by PA More