8-day fire strike starts after Government rejects pay agreement

Ministers warn that civilian strike-breakers could be recruited to commandeer red fire engines

Britain's firefighters began an eight-day stoppage at 9am after an agreement reached during all-night negotiations on pay and fire service modernisation was rejected by the Government

News that the first eight-day-long strike in the dispute would go ahead came at 7.30am today - 90 minutes before it was due to start.

FBU leader Andy Gilchrist blamed last-minute Government intervention and accused the Government of "wrecking" the chance of a deal. Union officials said that an agreement had been reached with employers, but it could not be ratified because Ministers insisted on vetting it.

Neither John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, nor his officials were able to read the agreement before the 9am deadline for the start of the strike.

Mr Prescott said this morning that the FBU should have called off the strike while the deal was examined by ministers.

Agreeing to it without looking at it first would have been like "signing a bouncing cheque", he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The Governmenbt then drew a line in thhe sand with Fire service minister Nick Raynsford declaring that the employers had "surrendered" item after item during the night's negotiations.

"I am afraid what happened last night was a very sad muddle. Yesterday evening about six o'clock the employers released a document which set out this proposal of achieving pay and modernisation," the minister told Sky News.

"We have always said that pay and modernisation had to go hand in hand, because any increase of pay above 4% had to be covered by savings and modernisation.

"In the course of the night, the document was progressively filleted in the course of the negotiations which could only be described as surrender on the part of employers.

"Issue after issue, item after item being removed that would have ensured that modernisation and the net outcome was a document that was uncosted, unfunded, unmonitored and will actually expose the taxpayer to several hundred million pounds worth of costs without any guarantee at all of achieving meaningful modernisation.

"We had first sight of this revised document, which was substantially different from what the employers had released yesterday evening, at around half past six this morning.

"No responsible Government could possibly write a blank cheque for several hundred millions of pounds without the prospect of modernisation.

"This document is worthless as a basis for achieving the modernisation which we have always said was fundamental to the proper future of the fire service," he said.

Under the draft agreement, firefighters' pay would have increased by 16 per cent over the next 12 months, in return for agreement to modernrising the service. But there remained a funding gap of around £80 million which the unions and employers oped the Government would pick up.

During overnight discussions, Mr Gilchrist held a series of private talks with local authority employers before reporting back to his union's executive.

Accompanied by the union's president Ruth Winters and assistant general secretary Mike Fordham, he met three senior employers' leaders for two hours at a hotel near Euston station in central London. He then returned at 2.30am to brief his executive at another hotel nearby.

The union's 19-member executive voted unanimously to accept the proposed deal and call off the strike. Meeting in the library of the Russell Hotel close to Euston station they took the vote at 5.30am.

But at 6.10am Mr Gilchrist received a call on his mobile phone from Phil White, one of the local authority negotiators saying that the Office of Deputy Prime Minister wanted to see details of the proposed deal.

The union said they would wait until 7.30am. Mr White called shortly before then to say that Mr Prescott's office could not see the document before 9am - the exact time the strike was due to begin.

As the desperate attempts to avoid the industrial action continued, ministers warned that civilian strike-breakers could be recruited to commandeer red fire engines.

Any move by the Government to employ drivers with HGV licences to take red fire engines risks violent clashes on picket lines outside fire stations and will be reminiscent of tactics used by the Thatcher government during the miners' strike of 1984-85.

The Prime Minister's spokesman said if public safety demanded it, civilian recruits could be used to retrieve red fire engines. The plan to use what firefighters will almost certainly call "scabs" followed a refusal by chief police officers and senior military personnel to order their staff to cross picket lines to retrieve the engines.

Services personnel, who were using 50-year-old Green Goddesses in last week's 48-hour strike and will be using them again today, are being trained to use modern engines.

In a further sign of tension, ministers have made it clear they could ban the strike using 1992 Tory union laws if they believe firefighters are willfully and maliciously harming human life. Mr Blair's spokesman also said emergency safety cover had not been finalised because Whitehall was awaiting a signed document from the union. Andy Gilchrist, the union's general secretary, said ministers had been dragging their feet.

In a statement to the Commons last night, the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, urged the FBU to "talk, not walk" and call off its "damaging and dangerous" industrial action. He repeated, however, that agreeing to their 40 per cent pay demand would not be fair to other workers in the public or private sector.

Employers said the union was offered a deal worth 16 per cent in return for an agreement to modernise the service. They said the offer would take the pay of a qualified firefighter from £21,531 to more than £25,000. The deal would be spread over two years but fully trained personnel would be paid £25,000 by next November.