Urgent talks to stop rail strikes and avert train misery ahead of Christmas

Rail minister Huw Merriman is due to meet RMT boss Mick Lynch on Friday for talks on strikes threatening to cause misery for travellers and businesses during the festive season.

The union, rail chiefs and Government are coming under increasing pressure to resolve the dispute to stop it disrupting people’s plans to go home or visit friends for Christmas by train.

Thousands of restaurants, bars, hotels and clubs in London also face a third consecutive heavily disrupted “party season” if walk-outs planned for this month and January go ahead.

The capital will be disproportionately hit as nearly half of all rail journeys begin or end in the city.

The West End and the City usually see huge numbers of Christmas lunch, dinner and party bookings for office workers who would take trains back home to the commuter belt afterwards.

There are also fears that the usual Christmas trips from visitors further afield to shop in the West End, where the Oxford Street and Regent Street lights are a big draw, or to go to a show in Theatreland, will be hit.

More than 40,000 members of the union across Network Rail and 14 train operating companies will walk out on December 13, 14, 16 and 17 and on January 3, 4, 6 and 7 in their dispute for better pay and conditions.

Mr Lynch met Scotland’s transport minister Jenny Gilruth yesterday and they both sought to pile pressure on the Westminster government to do more to resolve the industrial action.

Afterwards the Rail, Maritime and Transport union’s general secretary said: “I would urge the UK government to adopt the same pragmatic and constructive approach we have seen in Scotland and Wales so we can resolve this dispute and deliver a fair deal for passengers and workers.”

Transport Secretary Mark Harper said he wanted to work with the RMT and employers “in good faith” to resolve issues and “help the employers and you reach a resolution that is fair to all”.

Britain is facing a wave of strikes, raising fears of a 1970s-style “Winter of Discontent”. Industrial action is also being taken by nurses, ambulance crews, postal workers, university lecturers and sixth-form college staff, with threatened walkouts by civil servants and firefighters also balloting on action.

Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting claimed there had not been a “single moment of negotiation” from the Government to avert NHS strikes.