TORIES pledging to set up a Conservative trade union movement were branded hypocrites yesterday, after it emerged that the project’s leading light had a record of voting against workers’ rights.

Essex MP and Tory deputy chairman Robert Halfon has announced plans to launch the Conservative Workers and Trade Union Movement — which would operate within his party but offer membership to those outside.

Mr Halfon “There will be a voice for moderate trade unionists who feel they may have sympathy with the Conservatives or even just feel that they’re not being represented by militant trade union leaders.”

But parliamentary documents show Prospect member Mr Halfon has a consistent record of anti-union activity in the Commons, including supporting the Tories’ Trade Union Bill, the introduction of employment tribunal fees and the abolition of the agricultural wages board.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “Robert Halfon has consistently voted in Parliament against workers’ interests, most recently supporting the government’s vindictive and unnecessary Trade Union Bill designed to severely restrict our ability to assist people at work.

“Scratch the surface and this is just more of the same -old Tory hypocrisy.”

In an interview with House magazine, Mr Halfon claimed the Tories were “the party of trade unions.”

“It was a Conservative prime minister, Disraeli, who legislated to allow trade unionism.

“Even Margaret Thatcher said we should protect the trade unions.

“But I think that trade unionism should be for the many, not the few.

“And at the moment, so much of it, you see it through the … prisms of a few militant leaders who I believe don’t represent the thousands of ordinary trade union members.”

The Tories already play host to Conservatives at Work, a group that sounds remarkably similar to the new organisation Mr Halfon has promised.

The current organisation came into the spotlight during the Labour leadership election, when its vice-chairman John Barstow claimed to speak on behalf of shopworkers’ union Usdaw in an attack on Jeremy Corbyn.

Usdaw executive member Mr Barstow was slapped down by his union when he said: “Support for the integrity of our United Kingdom and support for HM Forces are non-negotiable qualifications for holding office under Her Majesty.”

The TUC declined to comment on the announcement of the new group.

Robert Halfon's voting record

SUPPORTED
- The government’s draconian Trade Union Bill
- Cuts to spending and public-sector jobs, freezing pay and cutting pensions
- Freezing working-age benefits and cutting tax credits
- Harsher benefits sanctions
- Fees for employment tribunals
- Increasing VAT and cutting corporation tax
- Support for cutting Civil Service redundancy pay and removing the legal requirement to get the agreement of staff to cut terms
- Privatising Royal Mail
- The bedroom tax and benefit cap
- The Health and Social Care Bill
- Abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board
- Cuts to legal aid

OPPOSED
- A review of zero-hours contracts
- Attempts to protect Sure Start children’s centres
- Measures to close the gender pay gap
- A mansion tax