An stinging attack on Tony Blair was on Monday mounted by one of the UK's largest unions.

The attack, which rebuts Blair's claim that some unions are trying wreck his public service reform programme, comes in an advertising campaign being launched by the GMB.

The advertisement features a nurse holding a new baby with the slogan, "Is she one of the wreckers, Mr Blair?"

The campaign comes as the unions gear-up for a clash with the government over its plans for greater private sector involvement in schools and hospitals.

Speaking yesterday, the TUC's general secretary, John Monks, said that the week's theme would be "a wrecking innuendo".

"It's not worthy of the government to indulge in some juvenile terminology about a subject that is very serious."

However, home secretary David Blunkett denied that Tony Blair's comments, made during a speech to the Labour party spring conference, were in reference to the majority of trade union members who had made, "a magnificent contribution over the past five years to the success of this government."

"It may well be aimed at those who, whatever you do, are against it," he said.

The leader of the Conservative Party, Iain Duncan Smith, accused the prime minister of playing "the blame game".

He said: "He's been in power five years, it seems stupid to go down the road of the blame game when in reality it's the government's record that is in question."

Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Charles Kennedy said that the government had lied about the cost of the NHS.

"If Labour had been honest about the actual cost of getting us proper health care, we would have been told at the last election that taxes will have to go up to pay for it," he said.