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Kwasi Kwarteng to axe plans for unions to hold electronic strike votes

In a significant escalation of the Government’s war with unions, the Business Secretary is preparing to formally reject the proposals - Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
In a significant escalation of the Government’s war with unions, the Business Secretary is preparing to formally reject the proposals - Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Kwasi Kwarteng has killed off plans to allow unions to hold electronic votes on strike action, The Telegraph can disclose.

In a significant escalation of the Government’s war with unions, the Business Secretary is preparing to formally reject proposals for electronic strike ballots – ending a move towards the change, set in train by David Cameron in 2016, that would have made it easier to organise strikes.

The disclosure comes after Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, called on Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, to “tone down the rhetoric and get on with his job” in order to settle the dispute over jobs, pay and conditions for rail staff.

Meanwhile, it emerged that Nadia Whittome, a Labour MP, has donated £2,000 to the RMT’s strike fund despite Sir Keir Starmer’s stance against the industrial action.

The Trades Union Congress has said the current legal requirement for strike ballots to be held using postal votes is outdated, “expensive, time-consuming and does little to boost participation”.

But in a formal response to a review by Sir Ken Knight, a former commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, Mr Kwarteng is expected to allude to the potential for electronic ballots to be manipulated by “ill-intentioned” states such as Russia.

He will cite the report’s concerns that electronic votes could be vulnerable to a “malevolent attack on Britain’s IT systems, whether from criminals, those seeking to frustrate users or from those directly or indirectly employed by ill-intentioned foreign states”.

The decision, and the timing of the announcement, is likely to infuriate union leaders, who have been demanding action since the review was first published in December 2017, when Theresa May was Prime Minister.

It comes amid growing animosity between ministers and unions over workers’ pay. Three days of strikes have wreaked havoc on the railway system, and unions are threatening a summer of industrial action over pay and jobs.

Government sources insisted the primary reason Mr Kwarteng had decided to keep the postal voting requirement in place was the risk of electronic ballots being hacked.

An ally of the Business Secretary said: “Hostile states are looking for every opportunity to destabilise Britain’s economy, so this is absolutely the last thing Kwasi is going to take forward. It would be complete insanity.”

Proposal ‘dead and buried’

A government source added: “We looked at this in 2017 – even then, it warned about cyber-attacks from malign foreign states. Trade unions are having a laugh if they think ministers will take this forward, especially in today’s geopolitical context.”

Sir Ken’s review involved discussions with unions, employers and GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre. He also visited Estonia to examine the use of electronic balloting in the Baltic state.

He concluded: “In a period in which we are experiencing increased allegations of cyber-crime, whether it is hacking by nation states or delinquency by those motivated to disrupt or damage civil society it is particularly important to evaluate how practical and secure this method of voting is.”

Sir Ken also warned that electronic voting could leave union members “more open to coercion” and recommended testing electronic voting in “non-statutory” ballots. But the government source said: “The proposal is dead and buried.”