The Conservatives have attacked the government's handling of the fire workers' dispute.

Iain Duncan Smith used prime minister's question time to demand that troops be used to drive and operate modern fire engines during planned strikes by fire fighters.

"Would the prime minister confirm that in this day and age the safety of the public is more important than the sanctity of the picket line?" he asked.

"Will he give troops access to the most fire fighting equipment if this strike goes ahead?"

Responding, Tony Blair insisted that public safety was paramount and he stressed that the practical issue of training was relevant.

And he asked the Tory leader to consider the inflammatory impact of sending soldiers into fire stations.

"We don't have this dispute underway yet, we are trying to do what we can to resolve it. I think it is sensible to do what we can to try and calm the thing to try and get the fire fighters union to understand that the way forward is to come behind the review, submit evidence, and get this matter settled," Blair told MPs.

"We don't rule anything out anything at all for the protection of the public but at this juncture in time we think that the way we have dealt with this, which is to allow the military personnel to operate the appliances that they have is the best thing to do.

The prime minister said the use of troops was under constant review.

"But we think that if we were to go down the other path at this stage it would exacerbate the dispute rather than resolve it," he added.

The Conservative leader took issue with John Prescott's claim that training for soldiers would take three months.

"I rang the Retained Fire Fighters Union, what they said to me that in training to cope with emergencies, learning to drive a fire engine would take five days, learning the basics of specialist cutting equipment would take seven days, learning to take breathing equipment would take 10 days," he said to jeers from Labour MPs.

Duncan Smith argued that the army's green goddesses were now 50 years old and soldiers should be given access to state of art facilities.

"By their estimate the government would be able to put teams of troops trained to use this equipment not in 12 weeks but two weeks."

"If it comes to a question of whether he as prime minister will order the troops to cross the picket line the answer to that must surely be he will to safeguard the public," he said.

Blair repeated his concerns that the Tory call for troops to be sent into fire stations - particularly to train on equipment would "inflame the dispute".

"We are doing everything we can to make proper contingency planning. But we take the view that at this stage forcibly to go in take fire tenders out of the fire stations and do the work he is suggesting would in fact exacerbate and inflame this dispute rather than get it resolved," he said.

"I hope very much it is not the position of the Conservative Party that they are going to sit there trying opportunistically to exploit this."