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Healthcare workers on the picket line
Healthcare workers on the picket line

Train drivers are taking part in the fresh round of strikes on Friday, bringing more misery to weary commuters.

The Rail Delivery Group, the body that represents rail firms, said only around 37 per cent of rail services are expected to run, with no trains in some parts of the country.

Drivers from Aslef and wider rail union RMT are striking again as a long-running industrial dispute lingers on. Teachers in parts of Scotland represented by EIS will also be on strike.

Airports will be affected as flyers have been told to expect longer wait times as Border Force officers are expected to join the action.

It comes after Britain's biggest day of industrial action for over a decade took place on Wednesday when seven unions went to strike.

Schools closed across swathes of the country in what became a de facto general strike as train drivers, civil servants, airport and university staff join teachers in industrial action.

It saw 500,000 workers striking across seven unions in the biggest day of industrial action in over a decade, according to the Trades Union Congress.

The combined action comes as talks between the Government and the National Education Union (NEU) to avert the strikes collapsed on Monday.

Phil Douglas, director-general of Border Force, speaking at an aviation conference in central London, said: "It's everybody out".

"But we've been planning for this for weeks and months," he said.

"Of course there's going to be some disruption and some queues."

He added: "I don't rule out further industrial action. The union has a mandate until May."

Further action is planned for the coming weeks, as thousands of ambulance workers in Unison, across five services in England, will strike on February 10, the union announced.

Amid the increasingly bitter impasse over public sector pay, Rishi Sunak on Monday said he would love to “wave a magic wand” to boost NHS salaries, but the Government needed to get a grip on inflation, which meant being responsible about borrowing.

The Prime Minister suggested that pay rises could stoke a “vicious cycle” of inflation or increased taxes.

“Where we are with taxes at the moment, we can’t put them up any more, right, and we need to be getting them down,” he said.