Striking UK workers playing into Putin’s hands, says Zahawi

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The Conservative party chairman has said the military is on standby to take the place of striking workers such as ambulance and border staff, while claiming the planned industrial action was playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands by dividing society.

Nadhim Zahawi, a UK cabinet minister, said the army was part of contingency planning in which soldiers could be drafted in to take the place of those on the picket lines, as the government braces for a wave of strikes against low pay in the coming weeks.

The unions and the Labour party have expressed frustration that the government is refusing to negotiate over the issue of pay while ministers are publicly urging unions to get around the table to avert strikes.

Ministers are refusing to review its 3% pay offer to NHS workers when inflation is running at 11%, with the Royal College of Nurses stepping up plans for strikes on 15 and 20 December.

Speaking on Sky New’s Ridge on Sunday, Zahawi insisted it was up to union leaders to call off the strike and suggested they were playing into the Russian president’s agenda as he uses high energy prices fuelling inflation as a “weapon” in his war against Ukraine.

Zahawi said the government needed to show discipline in not raising public sector pay in line with inflation, which could fuel inflation further.

Urging unions not to proceed with strike action, he said: “This is a time to come together and to send a very clear message to Mr Putin that we’re not going to be divided in this way … Our message to the unions is to say ‘this is not a time to strike, this is a time to try and negotiate’.”

However, the GMB union and the Royal College of Nursing have pointed out that Steve Barclay, the health secretary, has refused to discuss pay levels in recent meetings, despite their suggestions that an improved but still sub-inflation pay offer could help avert strikes.

The RCN general secretary, Pat Cullen, said: “By refusing my requests for negotiations, Steve Barclay is directly responsible for the strike action this month. Nursing staff don’t want to be outside their hospitals; they want to be inside, feeling respected and able to provide safe care to patients.”

With no breakthrough yet, Zahawi said the government was making plans to bring in military personnel.

“It is the right and responsible thing to do to have contingency plans in place,” Zahawi told Sky News. “We have a very strong team at Cobra who are doing a lot of the work in looking at what we need to do to minimise the disruption to people’s lives.

“We are looking at the military, we are looking at a specialist response force which we set up a number of years ago. We have to make sure are borders are always secure and that is something we guarantee. Things like driving ambulances and other parts of the public sector – we have got to try and minimise disruption.”

Labour’s Bridget Phillipson told the BBC there needed to be a “fair deal for workers” and there could not be a “position of agreement without negotiation”.

The shadow secretary of state for education said trade unions were right to “argue around pay and terms and conditions” and they were “desperate to have a conversation and have a discussion around pay”, while ministers were refusing to do so.

Phillipson said there was likely to be a compromise somewhere between the union’s requests and the government’s offer.