Teacher strike would be unforgivable, says Zahawi

Children have faced enough struggles through Covid, warns minister after largest union threatens walkout

A TEACHERS’ strike would be “unfor- givable” in the wake of Covid, the Education Secretary says today as officials draw up plans for an army of supply teachers to keep schools open.

Nadhim Zahawi writes in The Daily Telegraph that young people have already suffered “more disruption than any generation that’s gone before them”, after the UK’S largest teaching union threatened to ballot for a strike.

The Government will today unveil plans to change the law to allow businesses to use skilled agency workers to cover striking staff.

The legislation, which is expected to be in place by the autumn, will allow supply teachers to keep schools open while union members are striking, Whitehall sources said.

It comes as the rail network will again be brought to a standstill today by the biggest industrial action in decades.

Mr Zahawi’s attempt to tackle teachers at the first threat of strike action will be viewed in contrast to what was seen as a slow reaction to the rail unions. Grant Shapps has faced criticism for failing to meet the RMT face to face.

The National Education Union (NEU) yesterday became the latest union to demand an “inflation-plus” pay rise in a letter to Mr Zahawi.

It warned that it would ballot on striking at the beginning of the next school year if its demands were not met, urging the Education Secretary to “respond to the new economic reality of double-digit inflation and the threat this poses to teacher living standards”.

Dr Mary Bousted, the joint general secretary of the NEU, encouraged Mr Zahawi to “commit to an inflation-plus increase for all teachers”. The latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics showed that inflation has reached a 40-year high of 9.1 per cent.

A second education union, the NASUWT, has also said it will ballot its members for industrial action if staff are not given a 12 per cent pay rise.

In his article, Mr Zahawi says that a strike would be “irresponsible” and it is “wrong” to make children endure more disruption after the pandemic.

“Young people have suffered more disruption than any generation that’s gone before them and to compound that now, as recovery is in full swing and families are thinking about their next big step following school or college, would be unforgivable and unfair,” he says. He adds that he is “deeply concerned” that this week’s rail strikes are “piling undue stress on to our children, at what is always an anxious time” with hundreds of thousands of pupils sitting GCSES and A-levels.

In March the Government submitted its evidence to the School Teachers’ Review Body, which proposed an 8.9 per cent increase to teachers’ starting salaries but just a 3 per cent increase for their more experienced colleagues.

Concerns about the impact on students were also raised by Boris Johnson, who called for exam boards to show understanding when marking the papers of students whose journeys were disrupted by the stoppages.

But the Prime Minister faced fresh scrutiny and Tory criticism of his economic approach to inflation, which underpins negotiations on rail worker pay. The decision to increase the state pension and benefits by inflation next year but reject calls to grant public sector pay rises in line with prices was called “crazy” by one former minister.

Lord O’neill, a Treasury minister under George Osborne, said: “The constant protection of pensioners seems ludicrous in itself and in these circumstances particularly crazy.”

But the Prime Minister’s spokesman said it would be “reckless” to increase public sector pay in line with inflation as it risked locking in price surges.

Thérèse Coffey, the Work and Pensions Secretary, urged rich pensioners to consider giving back the state pension rise, while Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, played down fears that the policy would fuel inflation. Mr Johnson faces a further test of his leadership today in the Tiverton and Wakefield by-elections.

A spokesman at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said that legislation to end bans on the use of agency staff would “minimise the negative and unfair impact of strikes”, adding: “Strikes in public services such as education can often mean parents have to stay at home with their children rather than go to work, or rail sector strikes stopping commuters getting to work or to other businesses.”

Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, said: “Repealing these 1970s-era restrictions will give businesses freedom to access fully skilled staff at speed, all while allowing people to get on with their lives uninterrupted to help keep the economy ticking.”

‘Young people have suffered more disruption than any generation before them’

Travel chaos be damned, the Tory front bench had turned out in force. Ministers jostled for space, crammed in like miserable commuters on a rail replacement bus. Conor Burns and Priti Patel, squashed together in a forced embrace, did their best not to elbow each other in the side.

The Labour benches looked less densely packed – perhaps a few were still out picketing? On Tuesday, Arthur Scargill had done the Tories a good turn by showing up at the RMT picket lines, fresh from his grace and favour flat in the Barbican and wearing his Battle of Orgreave cap for brand recognition. Twenty-five Labour MPS had followed his lead.

But Chris Elmore, who had the first question, opened with something altogether more personal – Carrie Johnson, that FCO job, and the mystery of the vanishing news story. Had the Prime Minister, he asked, “ever considered the appointment of his current spouse to a government post?”

The Tory benches fumed, but the PM, pinkening for only a moment, reverted to his well-oiled formula for fending off tricky questions. He barrelled into filibuster mode with a rant about the Government’s greatest hits, delivered in double-quick time.

This sometimes meant spluttering. A boast about “fiscal firepower” became “physical firepower”. Sometimes his words were entirely indecipherable; gobbling turkey noises punctuated by the odd “bah!”

For once, Keir Starmer put a bit of welly into it. Grant Shapps, he said, was more focused on “working on his spreadsheet tracking the Prime Minister’s unpopularity” than trying to find a solution to the disruption.

His nasal grumble about bankers’ bonuses felt like a bit of an Ed Miliband c2013 tribute act, but at least it wasn’t entirely lifeless. The trouble for him was those pesky strikes. At the first mention, Tory backbenchers barked like trained seals and pointed across the floor. “Your strikes!” they bellowed, drilled to perfection.

Kate Osborne of Jarrow, a Labour PPS who’d ignored the picket line ban, ranted about executive pay and speculated about a general strike. If Starmer had been hoping to stay out of harm’s way, this was not helping.

Any mention of strikes drew wails of ecstasy from the Tory faithful. So too “levelling up”, which came up so often that the only rational explanation was some kind of sweepstake among Red Wall MPS.

Ian Blackford looked strangely subdued. The SNP spokesman opts for fire-and-brimstone mode at the first hint of scandal. Carrie-gate would have pricked his interest in normal circumstances. Yet for some reason – perhaps a Patrick Grady-shaped one – Blackford mumbled an unusually dry question, to jeers.

It was one of those PMQS that left all feeling a few IQ points dumber. Einstein would have morphed into Stephen Fry; Stephen Fry into Forrest Gump. As is often the case, the biggest winners were the people who didn’t tune in.