Transport Secretary Mark Harper faces questions over whether he has breached the ministerial code after the civil service was hijacked to spread political propaganda.
A leaked email obtained by the Mirror shows that civil servants in the Department for Transport were used to launch an attack on the Labour Party.
The ministerial code states: “Official facilities and resources may not be used for the dissemination of material which is essentially party political.”
It also requires that ministers “uphold the political impartiality of the Civil Service and not ask civil servants to act in any way which would conflict with the Civil Service Code”.
The Civil Service Code states that officials “must not use official resources for party political purposes”.
A senior press officer at the Department for Transport was used to send out attack lines targeting the Labour Party.
In a message on Tuesday evening, the official sent a journalist a quote from the Transport Secretary criticising the Opposition’s position on rail strikes.
Mr Harper said in the remarks: “Labour’s repeated failures to condemn these strikes are no surprise given they continue to be in the pockets of those very union bosses who are hellbent on causing disruption on our rail network, rather than on the side of passengers like this Government is.”
He added: “While Labour suggests otherwise, the Government has done our bit to try and resolve these disputes.”
Mr Harper’s Tory special adviser was copied in to the email that contained the quote.
It comes just weeks after Tory MPs attempted to stoke a row about the impartiality of the civil service after Sue Gray announced she was leaving to work for the Labour Party as Keir Starmer’s chief-of-staff.
A Labour source: “Conservative ministers have been caught red-handed misusing the civil service for political gain.
“Scores of pearl-clutching Tory MPs recently lined up to voice their faux concerns over impartiality.
“No doubt they’ll want to avoid accusations of rank hypocrisy and will be shouting about this.”
Passengers have suffered months of regular train cancellations as ministers have failed to end the rail strikes.
As part of the latest wave of walkouts, around 20,000 onboard crew and station staff who are members of the RMT plan to take industrial action on Friday.
The strike will disrupt services, but many operators will still run some trains.
Members of the drivers’ union Aslef will embark on a 24-hour strike on Saturday. It follows similar action by the union on Wednesday.
No trains will run on networks including Avanti West Coast, Chiltern Railways, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, Great Northern, Southern, Southeastern, Thameslink and Northern.
The Department for Transport spokesman said: "We take our responsibilities under the Civil Service Code very seriously.
"In this instance, there was an administrative error and a statement was issued by a civil servant. We are reviewing our processes to ensure this does not occur again."
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