May had secret plan to outlaw teachers and nurses’ strikes

THERESA MAY’S attempt to woo nurses and teachers with a pay rise suffered an embarrassing blow last night after it was revealed she secretly planned to ban their right to strike.

A bombshell leak shows how she drew up tough new laws to curb strike action by key public-sector workers including doctors, nurses, teachers, Customs officers, prison guards and rail workers.

The document also reveals Mrs May wanted to make the so-called ‘dementia tax’ even tough er by taking all but £50,000 of the savings of the elderly who need care homes – instead of the £100,000 set out in the manifesto.

Tory insiders say that if the two proposals had not been axed Mrs May would have lost the Election outright and put Jeremy Corbyn in No 10.

The Maggie Thatcher-style ‘anti-strike charter’ was included in a draft Tory election manifesto obtained by The Mail on Sunday. The bid to impose ‘minimum service levels’ – banning a union shutdown of essential services – was dropped days before the manifesto launch after the Prime Minister was warned it would cost votes.

Tory aides say she planned to ‘put it on the backburner’ until after the Election on June 8 with a view to reviving it if she won a bigger Commons major- ity. But she was forced to shelve it after big Labour gains left her clinging to power. Instead, Mrs May did a U-turn and tried to win back support of public- sector workers by ending a seven-year pay cap.

The proposed crackdown on strikes is contained in an email sent to Mrs May’s Australian election guru Lynton Crosby’s Crosby-Textor political campaigns company on April 25.

Headlined: ‘Minimum service levels for strikes’, it states: ‘Legislate to introduce minimum service levels in transport and other public services including border staff, prison staff, teachers, doctors and nurses in the event of a strike.’ The email was sent a week after Mrs May’s surprise announcement on April 18 that she was calling a snap June Election.

Under the proposal, if unions refused to maintain minimum service levels in essential public services during strikes, Ministers would impose these levels using new laws – and make it easier for agency staff to break strikes.

Mrs May dropped it after a last-minute revolt by Cabinet Ministers who said it would ‘alienate public sector workers’ and be seen as an ‘underhand’ way to stop union attacks on Government ‘austerity’.

In recent weeks, Mrs May has announced pay increases of about two per cent to prison officers and police and hinted at similar rises for nurses and teachers. But public- sector unions are threatening coordinated strikes unless they get a five per cent pay rise. A Conservative source said: ‘ Mrs May was hoping to go after public-sector unions. Now she wants to be their friend.’

Public- sector strike curbs have been advocated by business leaders for years, are common in many Western countries and were called for last month by the pro- Tory Centre For Policy Studies think-tank.

The leaked draft manifesto also shows Mrs May’s ‘dementia tax fiasco’ could have been even worse. It states: ‘We will change the rules so… people will never be left with less than £50,000 in savings and assets after paying for care costs.’

The figure was raised to £100,000 to ‘make it more palatable’. But it failed to avert an outcry – and the entire ‘dementia tax’ was dumped by Mrs May days after she unveiled it.