THE Government is empowering trade unions to go on strike, former Conservative Party chairman Sir Jake Berry has claimed.

He said trade union donations to Labour MPs don’t “pass the smell test” after ministers granted pay rises to public sector workers.

Speaking on GB News he said: “I voted to bring in [the strike laws]. They were brought in in 2016 under David Cameron’s government and they were brought in to tackle the fact that until recently, you’d had a strike in the NHS, where only 19% of the workforce bothered to take part in the ballot, and then the NHS was shut down.

“Those strike laws are not particularly onerous. To say that you are going to rip them up and go back to square one, you are putting the power back in the hands of the trade unions to hold this country to ransom.

“It doesn’t pass the smell test. People would say, half a million quid, almost, given to the Cabinet and the Cabinet making these very difficult decisions about who should pay for these pay rises, taking money away from pensioners, stripping their winter fuel payments away from them.

“And let’s not forget, we live in a country where only 17% of the working population actually work in the public sector. So the vast majority of people work in the private sector paying increased taxes to pay for these bumper pay rises.

“You have a minority, 17% of the UK’s workforce, effectively holding the rest of the country to ransom by going on strike, and the Labour Party is giving them more power to do so. That is wrong.

“The reason we didn’t settle the train drivers when we were in government is that we wouldn’t settle the pay deal until we’d dealt with the working conditions, these Spanish practices. We linked the two together.

“The Labour Party came and said, ‘you have whatever you want, here’s your 21%’, so you’re earning an average of 80,000 quid a year plus to drive a train, and then they’re going back on strike about the terms and conditions.

“This is just a disaster for British business and people who are working hard.

“The public sector isn’t meant to be a job creation scheme. It’s meant to serve us.

“It’s meant to be a public sector that works for Britain. What we’re at now with this Labour Government is Britain is having to work for this job creation scheme. It’s not about service.

“If train drivers want to be paid more, pay them to get the trains running on time. That’s what they should be paid more for, not just for turning up and doing their job badly.

“The most reliable service in London is the DLR – no train drivers, it’s all electronic.”