THE Prison Officers Association (POA) has called on Scottish Labour MPs and party leader Anas Sarwar to back its call for a UK-wide right to strike.

Prison officers across Britain lost that right as part of the Tories’ 1994 Criminal Justice Act, but while officers in Scotland had it restored a decade ago by then SNP justice secretary Michael Matheson, thousands of their colleagues elsewhere remain unable to withdraw their labour without breaking the law.

Now as POA fight to have the right restored to all its members as part of Labour’s new Employment Rights Bill, assistant secretary Phil Fairlie has written to Mr Sarwar to secure the backing of all Labour MPs in Scotland.

Mr Fairlie said: “We welcome much of the legislation in the Employment Rights Bill, which will improve workers’ rights. 

“However, for POA members in the rest of the UK, there is a serious omission in the proposals — there is no plan to restore their right to strike.  

“We are therefore seeking Mr Sarwar’s support and that of his Scottish Labour MPs for the return of this fundamental human right for all prison officers.”

Scottish Labour was contacted for comment, but one Labour MP who has already raised the issue in Parliament, Alloa and Grangemouth’s Brian Leishman, told the Star: “It should be every worker’s right to withdraw their labour. Prison officers should be no different.  

“The condition of our prison service has to change.

“As well as prison officers being allowed to strike, we must also improve the often squalid conditions that many facilities are in. We should see an end to the outsourcing of prison maintenance and a change to the ridiculously unfair and unsafe retirement age of 68.”