TORY ministers have launched their “biggest attack on the labour movement in a century,” Labour MP Richard Burgon warned today.

The member for Leeds East told transport union RMT’s young members conference in Hastings that the “draconian” Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill is based on a “pack of lies peddled by free market fundamentalists.”

The legislation, which reached the House of Lords earlier this week, would empower bosses to sack workers who refuse to cross their own picket lines during walkouts, mandating an as-yet undefined minimum service level which ministers will arbitrarily set later.