Boris Johnson’s plan allow the use of agency staff to break strikes will break In the international commitments, recruiters have warned.

The head of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, which represents more than 3,000 agencies, also warned the idea would fail to avert the rail strikes and would only “prolong” the bitter dispute.

The confederation joined with the TUC in a joint call on business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng to drop plans to repeal the ban – introduced in 1973 by Edward Heath’s Conservative government – as a ‘Summer of Discontent’ looms. The union body warned that the move would breach international labour laws.

The rail strikes are to go ahead after last ditch talks failed to resolve a dispute over pay, jobs and conditions, the RMTunion said.

Half of Britain’s rail lines will be closed on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday when members of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) and Unite walk out over pay, jobs and conditions.

Services across the UK will start to be affected from Monday evening, with just one in five trains running on strike days, primarily on main lines and only for around 11 hours.

The government is facing criticism after admitting it has still had zero meetings with unions on the eve of Britain’s biggest rail strike in a generation.

Ministers have been accused of a “dereliction of duty” after deciding not to intervene in talks between unions and employers, despite calls for them to play a role.

The Department for Transport confirmed on Monday afternoon ahead of the strike that ministers did not believe it was their responsibility to wade into the dispute.

Rail workers are going on strike this week over pay and redundancies, with planned stoppages on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday expected to cause disruption throughout the week.

As well as avoiding redundancies across the industry, the RMT says workers’ wages should keep up with inflation, which has soared to a record 40-year high of 9 per cent.

If they are unsuccessful, the wages of workers on the railway would be set to fall in real terms.

Many workers across the economy with less bargaining power face this prospect in the coming months, but as rail workers have managed to unionise, they are well-placed to try and keep the value of their wages.

Rail unions have accused the government of preventing the resolution of a dispute that will see millions of passengers’ journeys disrupted from Tuesday in the most significant strikes to hit the network since the 1980s.

The RMT pulled the plug on last-ditch talks with employers on Monday, blaming ministers for stopping Network Rail and train operating companies from negotiating freely on pay, jobs and conditions.

But Grant Shapps’ Department for Transport dismissed the claim as “absolutely not true”, insisting that a £2bn shortfall in resources for the national network that the RMT attributed to government cuts was in fact the result of reduced passenger numbers following Covid.

For the first time in decades, industrial action is being taken on a national and sustained scale. The government is also becoming aggressive – it is all going to get very, very ugly, writes Sean O’Grady.