GOVERNMENT plans to restrict “little supported” strike action could be a pre-cursor to even greater cuts in the public sector, it has been claimed.

The Trade Unions Bill, included in the Queen’s Speech, will see a 50 per cent voting threshold for union strike ballot turnouts introduced.

There will also be a requirement that 40 per cent of those entitled to vote must back action in essential public services – health, education, fire and transport.

Time limits will also be introduced on a mandate following a successful ballot for industrial action.

The NHS, schools, the fire service and the London Underground have all been subject to industrial action in recent years, sometimes following relatively low turnouts in strike ballots.

The Government said the aim is to ensure that strikes are the result of clear, positive and recent decisions by union members, as well as ensuring that disruption to essential public services has a “democratic mandate”.

The proposed changes immediately ran into opposition from the likes of the RMT, Unite and GMB unions.

Neil Foster, policy and campaigns officer for the Northern TUC, said the measures, previously outlined by Business Secretary Sajid Javid, were "extreme and unnecessary".

He said: "The Tory Government's planned attack on the democratic right to take strike action is another disturbing attempt to undermine civil liberties.

“Ministers hope to apply rules to trade union ballots that most of their own MPs did not meet in the general election.

"You've got to ask why the Tories are prioritising this unprecedented measure right now? We believe it's because they plan even deeper cuts and greater privatisation to public services and they know that trade union members won't go along with it.”

Stockton North Labour MP Alex Cunningham also drew a parallel with the election of the current Government.

He said: “This is an undisguised attack on trade unions to restrict their rights to defend their members and for them to strike.

“If the same threshold rules were applied to MPs, requiring them to have at least 40 per cent of all eligible voters to win an election, very few of the Tory MPs bringing in this legislation would be sitting on the Government benches.

"It is simply unfair and undemocratic.”