Unions warned of laws to ban strikes

Striking tube train drivers were warned last night they could have their right to take action curbed under a future Tory government.

The shadow Transport Secretary, Tim Collins, told the Tory conference that the party would work for a no-strike agreement. If that failed, the Conservatives would look at new laws to restrict or ban such strikes outright.

"I warn the unions today that we will not allow the right of millions to get to work to be held hostage by the greed and stubbornness of a few militants," he said.

He added: "If we cannot get a no-strike agreement on the Tube, then we will look at legislation to restrict or ban such strikes outright."

Mr Collins' warning came after a series of one-day stoppages paralysed the London Underground.

Transport was the "greatest failure and most serious indictment of the Labour Government", he said. Britain was "grinding to a halt", and few of the problems facing the country had short-term solutions.

Promising a transport policy document before the end of the year, he pledged: "We'll call off Labour's war on the motorist. Motorists are the majority. We will speak up for them and in doing so, we will be the true People's Party."

Mr Collins said the Tories would aim for faster-moving traffic by better co-ordination of roadworks; improved signposting; and the use of speed cameras to improve safety, not as "another mechanism to milk the motorist".

The party would also oppose congestion charging and be "unambiguous enthusiasts for rail". Rail privatisation had brought the first sustained increases in 50 years in both freight and passenger traffic and Tories should be proud of that, he said.

"But we cannot pretend that every aspect of rail privatisation was a success, that Railtrack worked remotely as we had hoped, or that all our 1990s changes have won popular support," he said.

Mr Collins denounced Labour ministers as a "bunch of devious, dishonest, disreputable scoundrels, forming a shabby, sordid and squalid little government".