Employers could be given permission to break strikes with agency staff

Unions have warned that a long-standing rule is marked for abolition

Employers could be allowed to use agency workers to break strikes, under the terms of the new Trade Union Bill.

Unions have warned that a long-standing rule designed to limit the risk of violence during industrial disputes is marked for abolition as the Government braces itself for an expected wave of public sector strikes.

In 1973, a time of industrial unrest, the Conservative government of Edward Heath banned employers from hiring agency workers as strikebreakers. It was feared that bussing them past picket lines could provoke violence.

A clause in the new Trade Union Bill would give David Cameron’s government the power to end it without consulting Parliament. Government business managers have scheduled the Bill to go before the Commons next Monday, when the TUC will be holding its annual conference in Brighton. Unusually, union leaders are urging friendly MPs not to be at their conference that day, but to be in the Commons to vote against the Bill, which also lays that a vote to strike is valid only if at least half those eligible to vote take part.

In some sectors, including the NHS, schools and transport, at least 40 per cent of those eligible have to vote in favour for a strike to be legal.

The Government is also consulting on whether to compel picket-line organisers to wear armbands and carry letters of authorisation, and to force unions to give employers and the police 14 days’ warning of any strike notices going on Facebook or other social media.

The TUC’s general secretary, Frances O’Grady, described the Bill as “the biggest attack on trade unions and the right to strike in 30 years.”

David Davis, a former Tory shadow Home Secretary, said: “There are undoubtedly serious civil rights issues in this Bill that Parliament will have to look at very carefully.”