Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, is being sued by Britain’s largest teaching union for refusing to talk to them about teachers’ pay, working conditions and key school policies.

Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, accused Mr Johnson of misleading Parliament by promising to accept recommendations that all “interested parties” were included in the negotiations, but cutting out the union’s 265,000 members.

“The NUT’s exclusion from education policy matters is an outrage,” he told delegates at the NUT annual conference in Harrogate, adding that the union had worked hard to end it. “Today, I can tell conference we’ve initiated legal proceedings against the Secretary of State.”

The decision to seek judicial review marks a dramatic escalation in the row between Europe’s biggest teachers’ union and the Government.

Since the NUT refused to sign up to a national deal on reforming teachers’ workload in 2003 because of its concerns about teaching assistants and performance-related pay, the Government has excluded its members from important talks.

Mr Sinnott told the conference that he believed Mr Johnson had acted against the wishes of Parliament in refusing to talk to the NUT.

“That’s why we are suing the Secretary of State. What he is doing has to be placed under wider scrutiny,” he said, to rapturous applause.

In his final speech to the conference, Mr Sinnott also called for a ban on drinks companies sponsoring professional sport before the 2012 Olympics.

Mr Sinnott said that a fifth of pupils excluded from school were thrown out for drinking alcohol, while 16 per cent drank alcohol every day. Quoting statistics from Alcohol Concern, he also said that drink-related deaths among young people were up 60 per cent since 1991.

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