RMT strikes to continue, says Mick Lynch, after members reject ‘dreadful’ pay offers – as it happened

The TSSA rail union has confirmed that it will ballot its members on the pay offers it has had from the rail companies. It says the union will not be making a formal recomendation to members as to whether they should accept or refuse.

The union says the offers includen“an improved pay deal over two years, commitments for no compulsory redundancies until the end of 2024, improved opportunities for redeployment, as well as full consultation over proposed reforms to ticket offices and any changes to terms and conditions”.

And it says the new offer includes managers or controllers at train companies, who would be offered redundancy protection.

A TSSA spokesperson said:

Members involved in this long-running dispute will now have the chance to vote on whether what the train companies have come up with is enough to address their demands.

We have fought for months on pay, job security and conditions in the face of a cost of living crisis and intransigence from government ministers.

What is on the table now is a result of careful negotiations and the commitment of our members in their determination to demonstrate our collective industrial strength.

Though the offers represent progress on a number of fronts we will continue to ballot for further industrial action as the dispute remains live.

RMT to reballot members later this year about extending six-month strike mandate

Gwyn Topham

The pay offers rejected by the RMT would have amounted to a pay increase of 9% over 2022 and 2023. But they came with significant changes to terms and conditions.

Mick Lynch, the general secretary, issued a statement (see 3.54pm) saying they were unacceptable after a meeting of the RMT’s national executive today where comments on the offers from branch members were discussed.

A smaller union, the TSSA, is expected to put the offers to a referendum of its members.

The proposals were understood to have been met with anger by many RMT staff around the country, with some branches urging increased action. Despite the absolute increase, the pay will amount to a real-terms pay cut for many, with more antisocial hours and less job security.

The transport secretary, Mark Harper, insisted this week that the offers from industry to the two sets of rail workers were the “best and final”.

The RMT has not called further strikes but said it would re-ballot in May to extend the six-month mandate. It staged ten days of strikes during a total of four weeks of industrial action around Christmas and New Year, without appearing to win further concessions.

The latest breakdown comes even as both sides confirmed that industrial relations had eased considerably since the departure of Harper’s predecessor Grant Shapps, with “a more sensible discussion” and “less animosity” according to the Rail Delivery Group chair Steve Montgomery.

Train drivers in the Aslef union went on strike for two days at the start of the month but the RMT leadership had appeared to be closer to settling, continuing with talks through much of January.

However, negotiations have not upped the overall cash available from either Network Rail or the Rail Delivery Group, which represents train operating companies. And while the offers on each side are similar, the package has different implications. Many staff at train firms are already entitled to free or discounted rail travel, which was a significant financial benefit for some Network Rail employees.

The closure of ticket offices will leave thousands of staff vulnerable despite the creation of new roles for staff, with guarantees of no compulsory redundancies expiring at the end of next year.

A third union, the TSSA, is expected to put the RDG offer to a referendum of its members for a decision. The union has been in turmoil with the entire leadership team suspended since an inquiry by Baroness Kennedy reported this week on sexual harassment and abuse by the former general secretary, Manuel Cortes.

Cortes was forced to retire in October but it has now emerged he remained on the payroll until this week. His replacement as interim general secretary, Frank Ward, is now also suspended, with a crisis administration in place considering next steps.

Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary, has issued this statement about his union’s decision to reject the latest pay offers it has received from Network Rail and the train operating companies.

He said the strike action would continue because his members want the union to reject “these dreadful offers’.

We have carried out an in-depth consultation of our 40,000 members and the message we have received loud and clear is to reject these dreadful offers.

Our members cannot accept the ripping up of their terms and conditions or to have safety standards on the railway put into jeopardy under the guise of so-called modernisation

“If our union did accept these offers, we would see a severe reduction in scheduled maintenance tasks, making the railways less safe, the closure of all ticket offices and thousands of jobs stripped out of the industry when the railways need more investment, not less.

We have carried out an extensive listening exercise and our members have spoken.

It is now time for the employers and the government to listen to railway workers in their tens of thousands.

Our industrial campaign will continue for as long as it takes to get a negotiated settlement that meets our members’ reasonable expectations on jobs, pay and working conditions.

The RMT rail union has rejected the latest pay offers from both Network Rail and the train operating companies, PA Media reports. I will post more details when I get them.

Grant Shapps, the energy secretary, has announced that all energy suppliers in the UK have pledged to end the installation of prepayment meters in the homes of vulnerable customers, my colleague Julia Kollewe reports.

Ed Miliband, the shadow climate secretary, said Shapps was doing “the bare minimum” and that “fundamental reform of this rotten, discredited system” was needed. He said:

The government has been asleep at the wheel during this crisis and now Grant Shapps wants credit for doing the bare minimum.

Millions of families have suffered as a result of their inaction, especially their total failure to enforce rules that were meant to protect vulnerable customers.

We need to see the end of the prepayment penalty and we need a complete ban on the forced installation of meters until there is a fundamental reform of this rotten, discredited system.

And on the same day, Jeremy Hunt refuses to budge on his decision to allow energy bills to rise to £3,000 in just seven weeks’ time with no proper windfall tax in place.

The DUP is facing mounting calls to drop its block on the Stormont assembly sitting so that a stalled organ donation law can be implemented in Northern Ireland, PA Media reports. PA says:

The planned law, named after six-year-old Belfast boy Daithi MacGabhann, who is waiting a heart transplant, has become a touchstone issue in the political debate around the powersharing impasse at Stormont.

However, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson reiterated today that his party would not return to Stormont unless issues of concern around the Northern Ireland protocol are resolved and accused the UK government of using the issue as “blackmail”.

In addition, Stormont speaker Alex Maskey has written to all MLAs to inform them that the regulations to allow the assembly the implement the legislation at a single sitting have not currently been laid.

The opt-out donation system was passed by MLAs last year but the secondary legislation required to implement it cannot be approved in the assembly due to the current political stalemate.

The DUP is preventing the functioning of both the assembly and the ministerial executive in protest at the post-Brexit protocol.

Only the assembly would need to be up and running to pass the regulations required to implement the opt-out organ donation system.

Daithi underwent another heart procedure in England this week.

On Friday, his father, Mairtin MacGabhann, implored the region’s politicians to do all they could to get the law implemented. “We’ve just got this get this done. Come on,” he told BBC Radio Ulster.

“Daithi deserves it. The organ donation and transplantation community deserve it. I’ve said it before, it’s much more than Daithi’s Law, it’s the beacon of hope.”

The opt-out system would mean people in Northern Ireland would be presumed to be donors unless they take a decision to opt out. It is being implemented to increase donation rates in the region.

Gordon Brown, the former Labour PM, has urged the UK and Scottish governments to work together to make cities like Glasgow realise their economic “superpower” potential.

In a speech to a conference on Friday jointly organised by Our Scottish Future, a thinktank set up by Brown, and the Glasgow Chambers of Commerce, Brown said the two governments should commit to making Glasgow a global centre for precision medicine. He said:

As a country, we are divided on so many things, whether it’s culture or whether it’s about how to respond to the present inflationary crisis.

We are divided on the constitutional question, but we can all unite around the mission to make Glasgow and Scotland one of the big centres for a new cluster that could change the lives of millions medically, but also create some of the best new jobs of the future.

And most of all, we can give people hope.

We do think there are huge opportunities for clusters of economic activity to be successful in this area, and across Scotland.

Glasgow has got all of the attributes that could make it a world-leading centre in precision medicine, just as in the 20th century it led the world in shipbuilding, and at the same time, we can deal with some of the huge challenges we face.

Our Scottish Future has also published a report setting out in more detail why and how Glasgow could become a global centre for precision medicine.

This morning the Daily Mail splashed on a story about AstraZeneca building a new factory in Ireland that had been planned for the north-west of England. Sir Pascal Soriot, the company’s chief executive, suggested the government’s plan to increase corporation tax was a key factor (although, as my colleague Nils Pratley reports in his analysis, other factors are relevant too). The Mail is one of the Tory papers pushing for tax cuts and it reports the story as evidence that supports its case.

Asked about the AstraZeneca decision, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said today he was “disappointed” but that he would not implement tax cuts funded by borrowing. He told reporters:

We’re disappointed that we lost out this time and we agree with the fundamental case they’re making which is that we need our business taxation to be more competitive and we want to bring business taxes down.

But the only tax cuts we won’t consider are ones that are funded by borrowing because they’re not a real tax cut. They’re just passing on the bill to future generations.

Here is some more comment on the results of the West Lancashire byelection. (See 9.45am.)

• Hannah Bunting, Sky News’ election analyst, says in a Sky News article Labour has now won three byelections in north-west England in recent months with record results. She says:

About 30 miles away from this seat, the City of Chester saw Labour up 11 points in December, and the Tories down 16 points.

A few weeks later in Stretford and Urmston, just 20 miles down the road, the result was nine points in Labour’s favour – a loss of 11 points for the Conservatives.

In all three contests, vote share records were set. The highest-ever proportions for Labour, the lowest ever for the Conservatives.

The swing to Keir Starmer’s party in the seat was 10.5%. In Stretford and Urmston last December, it was the same. In the City of Chester earlier that month, it was 13.7. In Wakefield last June, it was 13.6%.

Patrick English of YouGov calculates that Labour would need a swing of 13% at the next election to win a majority of one,” wrote John Rentoul in its aftermath.

However, it may be that since all three seats are now firmly in the Labour column, turnout is lower than it would be in a Tory-Labour marginal – and that the swing in such seats would be higher.

• But Britain Elects, a team that produces polling analysis, says the result is in line with what its election model says would happen if a general election were held now. It says Labour is on course for a landslide win.

• Ben Walker, who devised the Britain Elects model and who writes for the New Statesman, says the byelection result has not changed his view that Labour is heading for a big win.

Labour’s victory in West Lancashire is its third byelection hold in as many months. In December, the party retained City of Chester and Stretford and Urmston with 11.6-point and 9.3-point increases on its vote share at the 2019 election, respectively. Though all three are relatively safe seats for Labour, the double digit fall in the Tories’ vote share at each byelection is evidence that the much-touted ‘Rishi bounce’ is still yet to materialise.

• Andrew Teale, an elections expert and a Britain Elects editor, says West Lancashire is a seat where it is hard to squeeze the Tory vote.

• Jonathan Blake at the BBC says, because of the low turnout, drawing firm conclusions from the outcome is hard. He says:

The shift in support from the Conservatives to Labour since 2019, if repeated nationally, would just about be enough for Sir Keir Starmer to move into Number 10. But only just.

That swing of 10.5% is about the same as Labour achieved in the last byelection in Stretford & Urmston – another relatively safe seat for them.

But if Labour were looking for a tubthumping result that suggested a landslide win at the next general election, they didn’t get it.

That won’t provide much consolation for the Conservatives though, who can’t hide from a convincing defeat reflecting their poor showing in national opinion polls.

But in a winter byelection where barely one in three people turned out to vote, it’s hard to draw any firm conclusions.

In April the price cap on domestic energy bills is due to go up. Under the government’s energy price guarantee (EPG), unit prices are capped so that the average household energy bill would be £2,500, but when the cap goes up this notional average payment will rise to £3,000.

Yesterday Martin Lewis, the consumer champion and founder of the MoneySavingExpert website, urged Hunt to cancel this increase. He said the EPG was now going to cost the government much less than expected when it was announced last autumn, because wholesale gas prices have come down, and he said that, if the cap did go up in April, there would be a surge in fuel poverty.

Speaking to reporters this morning, Hunt implied that he was going to reject Lewis’s call to shelve the planned increase, saying that he did not have the scope for a “major new initiative” on energy. Asked if he was ruling out more support for households, he said:

We constantly keep the help we can give families under review.

But if you’re saying ‘do I think we’re going to have the headroom to make a major new initiative to help people?’, I don’t think the situation would have changed very significantly from the autumn statement, which was just three months ago.

Asked about Lewis’s argument that the fall in wholesale gas prices means the government is going to have to spend much less on the energy price guarantee than it expected, he said:

At the same time as energy prices have come down, so too have our receipts from the windfall taxes. So we have to look at everything in the context of what is responsible for public finances, because if we don’t, we’ll just see interest rates go up and then everyone who has a mortgage up and down the country will face a different kind of cost.

University staff and ambulance workers are staging more strikes today as the wave of industrial unrest over issues including pay, staffing and jobs continues to sweep across the country, PA Media reports. PA says:

University staff are continuing a 48-hour strike despite an announcement of fresh talks at the conciliation service Acas next week.

Members of the University and College Union (UCU) are on strike at about 150 universities.

Ambulance workers in England are staging a fresh strike in the long-running dispute over pay and staffing, with no sign of a breakthrough in the increasingly bitter row.

About 15,000 members of Unison in five areas are involved in the action, with officials warning of escalating action in the coming weeks unless the deadlock is broken.

Unison is balloting another 10,000 of its ambulance members in England for industrial action, so any future strikes could be the biggest yet for the union.

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has been giving interviews about today’s growth figures, which show the UK has narrowly avoided going into recession.

As my colleague Graeme Wearden reports on his business live blog, Hunt says the UK economy is “not out of the woods yet” but he says it has “underlying resilience”.

In an interview with Sky’s Paul Kelso, Hunt was also asked about public sector pay. He did not offer any concessions, but he did sound slightly more open to the prospect of improving pay offers than perhaps he did in the past. He said he would refuse anything that would “entrench high inflation”. But, when asked if he was saying “no” to more money, he said: “It’s not a no.”

Asked what he would say to public sector workers, Hunt said:

We’ll talk about absolutely anything to resolve these strikes – except measures that will entrench high inflation. We don’t think strikes are helpful. They’ve very damaging and very disruptive.

We think the best way to resolve these issues is to sit and talk and find a solution which doesn’t entrench the very inflation that is upsetting so many people.

When asked if this meant workers would not be offered more pay, Hunt said that Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England said yesterday that funding higher wage settlements through borrowing would be inflationary. He went on:

We want to get back into a situation where people’s real wages are growing. But the one thing that we shouldn’t do if you want that to happen is to do something that digs in this high inflation.

Asked if that was a “no” to more money, he said:

It’s not a no, it’s saying we’ll talk about absolutely anything, except things that will dig in the very high inflation that is causing people to see the cost of their weekly shop go up and the value of their wages erode.

Dave Penman, the leader of the FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, told the Today programme this morning that Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy PM, should not be commenting on the inquiry into the bully allegations about him. He said:

What we need is for this inquiry to conclude as quickly as possible and for the protagonist in it, who has been reminded about confidentiality, to stop giving comments to the public.

This demonstrates ably the issue of why the prime minister should have suspended Dominic Raab because, while these allegations are hanging over him, he is still serving as a minister, there are still concerns about someone who conducts themselves potentially in that way still being in charge of civil servants.

Asked if it was right for someone to be prevented from being a minister just because they were “difficult” to work with, Penman pointed out that bullying was against the ministerial code. And he said:

What you have to remember here is bullies are not good managers.

Bullies are ineffective. What you end up with is good people leaving – it is not actually a way to get people to work.

Here is my colleague Safi Bugel’s story about Labour holding West Lancashire in the byelection yesterday.

It was a safe Labour seat, and there was no realistic prospect of the party losing, which is why it did not receive much attention.

Here are the full results, from PA Media.

Ashley Dalton (Labour) 14,068 (62.30%, +10.16%)

Mike Prendergast (Conservative) 5,742 (25.43%, -10.88%)

Jonathan Kay (Reform UK) 997 (4.42%)

Jo Barton (Liberal Democrat) 918 (4.07%, -0.80%)

Peter Cranie (Green) 646 (2.86%, +0.49%)

Howling Laud Hope (Official Monster Raving Loony Party) 210 (0.93%)

Labour majority 8,326 (36.87%)

10.52% swing Conservative to Labour

Electorate 72,218;

Turnout 22,581 (31.27%, -40.53%)

2019: Lab maj 8,336 (15.83%) – Turnout 52,663 (71.80%)
Cooper (Lab) 27,458 (52.14%); Gilmore (C) 19,122 (36.31%); Thomson
(LD) 2,560 (4.86%); Stanton (Brexit) 2,275 (4.32%); Puddifer (Green)
1,248 (2.37%)

The key figure here is the 10.5% swing to Labour. This is very healthy, and almost certainly good enough to put Keir Starmer in No 10 after a general election. But it is not as big as the swing to Labour suggested by polling. In 2019, the Tories got 44.7% of the GB vote, and Labour 33%. The latest Politico poll of polls has Labour on 48% and the Tories on 26% – implying a swing of 16.8%.

This is the third byelection in a row that has seen Labour hold a safe seat. In the City of Chester byelection in December last year, Labour won with a swing of 13.5% from the Conservatives. And in the Stretford and Urmston byelection (also in December last year) Labour won with a 10% swing from the Tories.

UPDATE: I have amended the penultimate paragraph to say a 10.5% swing would almost certainly be good enough to put Keir Starmer in No 10 after an election. Previously it said it would be good enough for a Labour majority. Some election analysts think the byelection result is consistent with Labour being on course to win a general election by a landslide, but a uniform national swing of 10.5% would not produce a Labour majority according to some calculations. (See 12.34pm.)

Good morning. Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy prime minister, has repeatedly denied the multiple allegations – now the subject of an inquiry – that he has bullied officials in the three government departments that he has led, but generally he has issued denials through a spokesperson. Now, though, he has gone on the record himself, with two denials that set out his case with a bit more clarity.

Earlier this week, Newsnight broadcast a report based on an interview with an unnamed former senior civil servant who had worked with Raab. The official, who has not submitted a formal complaint, described Raab as “nasty and difficult” and gave examples of why his conduct could be seen as “bullying”.

Raab has responded to that. In an interview with the BBC, he said:

I’m not going to comment on anonymous reports in the media – my experience is that they are mostly incorrect. I’m confident I have behaved professionally at all times.

“Behaved professionally” is the line that Raab’s spokesperson has used since these allegations first surfaced, but this answer suggests that Raab believes people may discount allegations made anonymously.

Raab has also given an interview to the Daily Telegraph (primarily to discuss drug policy in prisons) and that was more revealing. Asked if he was confident that he would still be in post in the summer, Raab did not give a firm yes. Instead he replied:

I’m confident I have behaved professionally at all times. And I will engage with the inquiry, and of course I would not want to say anything that prejudiced it.

Raab was then asked if he was more robust than, say, Margaret Thatcher. He replied:

I think it’s difficult to compare different eras. But I think standards of professionalism, whether they’re in the business sector, the voluntary sector or the public sector, should involve setting high standards and zero bullying, and those two things are perfectly reconcilable.

(That was an odd question. Thatcher was famously robust with colleagues, and quite intimidating if they did not know their brief, but no one ever accused her of bullying officials.)

In his response, Raab seems to be accepting that he was demanding. But he is saying that setting high standards is not the same as bullying.

Dave Penman, the leader of the FDA union that represents senior civil servants, has been commenting on Raab’s interview. I will post what he said shortly, and any other reaction.

The Commons is in recess, and there is not much in the diary for today. But I will be covering reaction to last night’s byelection, and reporting some of the political reaction to the growth figures, although the main coverage of that is on our business live blog.

I’ll try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com