A “WAR against the government” was launched by the POA today demanding Sir Keir Starmer restore prison officers’ rights to strike after a report found the ban to be a breach of human rights.

POA general secretary Steve Gillan slammed the Labour government for reaching “a new low in its relationship” with unions as the Deputy PM David Lammy flatly rejected the union’s request to repeal a 1994 law banning them from taking industrial action.

Mr Gillan said Mr Lammy’s letter refusing to scrap Section 127 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act was a “betrayal of prison officers and ruptures any trust working people have in this government.”

Mr Lammy was responding to a letter from the POA which followed a report from the European Committee on Social Rights, which said the 1994 ban on strikes for prison officers infringed their human rights.

Their report found that in maintaining the law, Britain was in breach of its obligations under the European Social Charter.

Mr Gillan said: “The stance taken by the Labour government marks a new low in its relationship with the trade union movement.

“If need be, we will see them in court where we will have the grotesque spectacle of a Labour government defending Tory anti-trade union legislation.

“However, there is still time for this government to see sense, change tack and restore our members’ basic human rights.”

He added: “If they don’t it will send the opposite message and they will continue to lose the support of prison officers and trade union members across the whole movement.”

Speaking to the POA conference in Eastbourne today, national chairman Mark Fairhurst announced the union will “wage a war against this government to restore our right to strike.”

He highlighted recent wins by unions which have taken industrial action, such as probation workers, bin workers in Birmingham and junior doctors “who have achieved a 28 per cent pay increase, and they’re fighting for more, quite rightly.

“Governments can always find money for wars but can never find public money for a decent, public-sector pay award.

“Well maybe it’s time the POA waged a war. The war we need to win is against this government who refuse to give us our most basic of human rights, our workplace rights our industrial rights.

“The POA needs to start a war to restore our right to strike.”

The government was contacted for comment.