Responding to the Chancellor's comments in his mini budget on further restrictions for unions, RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said:

"We already have the most severe anti-democratic trade union laws in Western Europe and this latest threat will rightly enrage our members.

"The government should be working towards a negotiated settlement in the national rail dispute, not seeking to make it even harder to take effective strike action.

"RMT and other unions will not sit idly by or meekly accept any further obstacles on their members exercising the basic human right to withdraw their labour."