Transport Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan has said it is “not acceptable” to stop children getting to school or commuters getting to work during rail strikes.
He told MPs the Government will introduce legislation on minimum levels of service during the industrial action so passengers can “keep moving”.
Ms Trevelyan made the comments hours after the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union announced that its Network Rail members would hold further strikes in a tough row over pay, jobs and conditions.
The outages on November 3, 5 and 7 are expected to cause service disruption for a week.
Ms Trevelyan told the Transport Select Committee: “I will be disappointed if we continue to see this kind of industrial action.
“Incorporating MSL (minimum service levels) legislation will be a tool available if there is a total inability to move forward between the various parties, to ensure, as it says on the tin, minimum levels of service, so that the passenger, the customer , can continue to circulate.
“It is not acceptable to prevent children from getting an education, for people to go to work.
“All these areas, draining the economy of its potential because of the need for rail to move people, is not acceptable.
“So we have to find a compromise and a balanced solution that everybody can live with so that we can get on with exactly the point of growing those revenues again.”
The purpose of the MSL laws is to ensure that transport services such as rail, London Underground and buses cannot be shut down completely when workers strike.
The Government said it expects the legislation to come into force in 2023.
Unions have criticized the policy, and many believe it will be unworkable.
