The Government should "get around the table" with rail unions for talks and launch a last-ditch bid to halt "cruel" strikes due to take place this week, a Tory MP has said.
Jake Berry, who chairs the Northern Research Group of backbench Conservatives, broke ranks on Sunday to warn ministers the "only way out of a dispute is via negotiation".
It comes after the RMT union confirmed that strikes at Network Rail and 13 train operators will go ahead on Tuesday, Thursday and next Saturday, and on London Underground on Tuesday.
Boris Johnson and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps have refused to join negotiations and have repeatedly said unions should call off the walkout.
Mr Shapps dismissed a call from the RMT for the Government to intervene as a “stunt”, saying the union had been “gunning” for industrial action for weeks.
But Mr Berry has said the government should act so the country can avoid the widespread disruption of the three-day walkout.
He said: "By training I'm a lawyer and I can tell you that the only way out of a dispute is via negotiation."
"I would call on all parties including the government [...] to get around the table because it's going have a huge negative impact on people's lives," he added. "I actually just think it's really cruel as the country comes out of a really horrible period to stop people reconnecting with their relatives. I just think is a deeply cruel and selfish thing to do."
Pressed again on whether he thought the government should step in, Mr Berry told Times Radio: "Absolutely. I mean, what's the alternative? The only way this will be sorted out is by people sitting down with, I don't know, cold beer and sandwiches - I don't know if they still do that anymore - but sitting down and sorting this out.
"I represent a constituency with low wages. I understand that people on low wages need a pay rise including not just in public services, our NHS and on the railways, but in the private sector as well.
"And I think what is called for in this crisis is for people who are relatively well paid, including members of parliament, to show absolute restraint - [as] we have broad shoulders - and to prioritise those on the lowest wages really struggling getting a decent pay rise, and I think that would be the right approach for the government to take."
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said the union had no choice but to act after the train operators had still not made a pay offer when talks adjourned on Thursday.
“What else are we to do? Are we to plead? Are we to beg? We want to bargain for our futures. We want to negotiate,” he told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme.
Mr Shapps, however, said the union had been “gunning” for industrial action for weeks and accused it of “punishing” millions of “innocent people” who will be affected by the strikes.
“Of course, it is a reality that if we can’t get these railways modernised, if we can’t get the kind of efficiency that will mean that they can work on behalf of the travelling public, then of course it is jeopardising the future of the railway itself,” he told the Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme.
“I think it is a huge act of self-harm to go on strike at the moment. I don’t believe the workers are anywhere near as militant as their unions who are leading them up the garden path. They are gunning for this strike. It is completely unnecessary.
“There is a sensible pay deal, there is a sensible modernisation of the railway which would enable much more flexibility, but the unions need to understand the world has changed and people don’t necessarily need to travel in the way they did in the past.”
For Labour, shadow communities secretary Lisa Nandy said that only the Government could now resolve the dispute and prevent the strikes going ahead.
“We know what it means when the railways grind to a halt, but that’s why the Government has got to get round the table with the cleaners and the ticket office staff and the station workers to resolve this because they’re the only people who can,” she told the programme.
“During the pandemic they took the right to negotiate back from train operating companies, so they’re the only people who can resolve this and yet they’re not prepared to.
“The biggest problem that this country has is not militant workers, it’s a militant Government.”
