Home secretary and Fareham MP Suella Braverman is blasted by unions for 'scrambling around' to cover striking border staff

Arrangements have been made for 1,200 troops from the Army, Navy and RAF to help mitigate disruption from widespread walkouts over the festive period, with more than 1,000 civil servants also drafted in to lend a hand.

Ambulance crews in England are due to walk out for two days on December 21 and 28 in a row over pay, while border staff in the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) will strike for eight days from December 23 until New Year’s Eve.

Paul O’Connor, the PCS’s head of bargaining, made the accusations of Ms Braverman and said the military have ‘better things to do’ than passport control.

‘They are not sufficiently trained to carry out this role and they shouldn’t be put in this invidious position when they should be enjoying the festive break with their families,’ he said.

‘The same applies to civil servants who are being pulled in from elsewhere, also leaving their jobs uncovered.

‘Instead of throwing good money after bad trying to desperately mask the effectiveness of our industrial action, the Government should put a serious offer on the table to deal with the cost-of-living crisis that they have created for their own workforce. That is the only way to resolve this dispute.’

Military personnel will join civil servants filling in for striking Border Force staff. They will help ‘minimise disruption for passengers’ by checking documents and passports.

The Cabinet Office is also set to publish a new ‘resilience framework’ today (Monday) bringing together all levels of government, as well as the private sector, charities and the public to ‘bolster’ the UK’s preparedness for industrial action.

Meanwhile the Chief of the Defence Staff has said the military is ‘busy’ and should not be treated as ‘spare capacity’. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin told The Sunday Telegraph that the armed forces need to focus on their ‘primary role’, and it would be ‘slightly perilous’ to treat them as the ‘ultimate backstop’ for incidents such as major industrial action.