Boxing Day travel disrupted across UK.

Severely limited Boxing Day rail services and a London-wide tube strike caused extensive disruption for travellers using public transport.

A 24-hour walkout by tube drivers affected London Underground while overground lines remained shut in most of the country.

Londoners relied on buses to move around as underground drivers belonging to the Aslef union staged a 24-hour strike over extra pay for members working on the public holiday. LU mounted a last-minute legal challenge but a high court judge ruled last week that the strike was lawful and could go ahead.

Aslef's general secretary, Mick Whelan, said tube workers needed "quality time" off over the Christmas period and said the union had been negotiating on the issue for two years.

"The original dispute two years ago was about quality time off," he told Radio 4's Today programme. "We agree that we made an agreement with the company in the mid-90s. At that time very few trains ran on Boxing Day. In the last decade and a half we have run as many trains on Boxing Day some years as we run on any day of the week, so the intended quality time people were expecting to get has never happened."

The union's terms were "negotiable", he added, with transfer and training agreements that could be made to "subsidise what we are seeking to achieve".

The union plans three more 24-hour strikes on 16 January, 3 February and 13 February; it said it balloted 2,200 drivers on the underground network, who returned a 92.3% vote in favour of action. The union had "no intention" of staging a strike during the Olympics, he added.

Howard Collins, London Underground's chief operating officer, said the number of drivers scheduled to work had been reduced from last year's 1,100 to 880. "We have made every effort to resolve this issue, including reducing the number of drivers needed to work Boxing Day so that only one in four are rostered to work," he said. "However the Aslef leadership are intent on tearing up long-standing agreements that cover pay and annual leave and demanding even more – triple time and another day off."

The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry accused Aslef of holding London and its businesses "to ransom" through tube strikes. "Retailers have already had one of their toughest years, with recent sales figures showing a decline year-on-year fuelled by poor consumer confidence, rising unemployment and mild weather," said its chief executive, Colin Stanbridge.

Meanwhile, trains throughout the UK were operating a significantly reduced service, with only five rail companies out of 25 running a "limited" Boxing Day service. Labour accused Conservatives in the coalition government of "hypocrisy" for failing to ensure a rail service on Boxing Day, after the Tories had attacked the previous government for forcing families and sports fans on to the roads by failing to provide trains the day after Christmas.

Labour's transport spokesman, John Woodcock, said ministers had done "nothing" in office to encourage operators to run a Boxing Day service, adding that in 2008 and 2009 the then Conservative transport spokesman, Stephen Hammond, criticised Labour for "condemning sports fans and families … to misery on our clogged-up motorways".

Woodcock said: "This is total hypocrisy from the Tories. Year after year in opposition, the Tories attacked the Boxing Day rail shutdown. But in government they have done nothing to encourage rail operators to run a Boxing Day service, and this Boxing Day most trains are not running. This is typical of the Conservative party's opportunism – making promises they never had any intention of keeping."

The Department for Transport said train operators were running the same level of services as any other Boxing Day in recent years. A spokesman said: "There is much lower demand for trains on Boxing Day and requiring operators to run them would require significant public funding. This would not represent good value for taxpayers' money."

A DfT source criticised Labour's "failure" to condemn tube strikes in London. "Labour can't talk about hypocrisy when they have accepted thousands of pounds from Aslef and failed to condemn their Boxing Day strike".

In Scotland, rail services have been disrupted by a 72-hour strike that began on Christmas Eve.

On the roads a man was killed after he was hit by a car on the hard shoulder on the M25, one of Britain's busiest motorways. Police were called to the southbound carriageway between junctions 15 and 14 at 7.20am. The man, believed to be in his 20s, was taken by air ambulance to an east London hospital but died just before noon.

This article forwarded by www.medicaltourism.hk from The guardian.