Ministers and union chief in clashes over strike

A union leader and Ministers clashed over who was to blame for the deadlocked row, which will lead to a 24-hour walkout by up to two million workers on Wednesday.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said the Government should pause and reflect on how it had managed to “alienate its entire workforce”.

Despite last-minute pleas from the Government for Wednesday’s strike not to go ahead, unions pressed on with arrangements for marches, rallies, picketing and protests to be held across the UK.

Mr Barber said: “This will be the biggest strike for a generation. The Government has managed to alienate its entire workforce. Even health service staff, who are very reluctant to strike, will be leaving their workplaces, although they have ensured proper emergency cover.

“Ministers must take notice of the strength of feeling of its workforce.”

Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, denied union charges that the Government was planning a “race to the bottom” on pensions, saying that quite the opposite was true.

He said: “I firmly believe that public service workers deserve the very best pensions. That’s why we are making sure they remain so generous.”

But Mr Barber accused the Government of “deliberately misleading” public sector workers over the impact of planned changes to their pensions, attacking Ministers’ claims that all workers on low and middle incomes would get as good, or better, pension terms under the new scheme.

“They have deliberately misrepresented the generosity of their proposals,” he said.

Unions said Ministers’ assertions – repeated by David Cameron last week at Prime Minister’s Questions - were contradicted by the Government pensions calculator on the official Civil Service website.

They said that examples fed into the calculator appeared to support their claim that some people would lose out under the new scheme.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said it was union bosses who were “wilfully misrepresenting” the Government’s position.

The scale of disruption set to be caused by the strike became clearer at the weekend when it was revealed that thousands of NHS operations and appointments were being cancelled and rescheduled because of action by NHS staff.

In England, around 60,000 non-urgent operations, out-patient appointments, tests and follow-up appointments are thought to be postponed.

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