Army on standby to take place of striking workers, says Conservative chairman

The Conservative party chairman said the military is on standby to take the place of striking workers, such as ambulance and border staff, while claiming that 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 prevent strikes.

With inflation at 11% and the Royal College of Nursing stepping up plans for strikes on 15 and 20 December, ministers are refusing to review its 3% pay offer to NHS workers.

Speaking on Sky New s Ridge on Sunday, Zahawi said it was up to the union leaders to call off the strike and suggested that they were playing into Russian President's agenda as he uses high energy prices as a weapon in his war against Ukraine.

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

Pat Cullen, the RCN's general secretary, said: By refusing my requests for negotiations, Steve Barclay is directly responsible for the strike action this month. Nursing staff want to be inside, feel respected and able to provide safe care to patients, and they don't want to be outside their hospitals. With no breakthrough yet, Zahawi said the government was planning to bring in military personnel.

Zahawi said it was the right and responsible thing to do to have contingency plans in place. 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 that we set up a number of years ago. We have to make sure the borders are secure and that is something we guarantee. We have to try to minimise disruption in things like driving ambulances and other parts of the public sector. Labour spokesman 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 about pay and conditions and they were desperate to have a conversation about 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.