'We would get in the room and negotiate'

The next one comes from Jonathan. He's a junior doctor from Leeds. Jonathan, there he is. Thank you. So I've been on strike because I earn more money per hour working part time as university student than I do as a newly qualified Dr. Abysmal pay, conditions and morale mean that more of my colleagues than ever are planning their exit and I worry about what this means for my loved ones and the wider general public. Scotland and Wales have decided that they can pay NHS doctors fairly. How and when will you commit to doing the same in England? Well, we won't be able to do anything unless we win the election. We've obviously only been in opposition so far. I have been frustrated, if I'm honest, that these strikes have gone on as long as they have gone on. The strikes are very bad for patients. People are very anxious about the strikes. I don't think doctors want to be on strike. As I said earlier, my wife works in one of the big London hospitals so I know first hand and relayed every night the pressure that NHS staff are under been unrelenting during Kovid, unrelenting now because of waiting list. So what we would do is instead of arguing about who gets in the room first to negotiate with the doctors, we would roll up our sleeves in a grown up way, get in the room and and settle this dispute so that patients can get the care they need, doctors can get back to work and the country can move forward. Because we can't go on like this anymore. And the sooner we have a bit of grown up politics in this, the better, I think, because we absolutely need to move forward as a country. Are you going to pay them more? The, the, the, are you gonna pay them all because you're, you've said that you won't meet their pay claims. Well, the, the doctors say they want 35% and I've had to say we don't, we, we want a path to pay restoration. So I, I get that. But I, I again, I want to be straight in real terms. And we're looking to make that there's the 35% thing is, is not pay progression conditions. And all of that could be negotiated on the 35%. I don't think we can afford that as a country because of the damage that's been done to the economy. I don't want to pretend to you that we can, I'll sit down in a room and negotiate and find a way through this, just as has happened in other countries, because it's intolerable that we go on. But I'm not going to start with the proposition that we simply accept whatever the other side is asking for. That's not how negotiations go. And you wouldn't respect the government if it operated in that way. And other people in other walks of life have got constraints and pressures on their lives that have to be balanced. But will we be grown? All that's happened this year and it's, it's so frustrating, is the government say we want a deal, but we won't go into the room first. It's for the doctors to well, I think you may be right. And the fact they've left this to the election without fixing it and just booted it the other side of the election, I think it's disgraceful. It doesn't do you any good. It doesn't do patients any good and it doesn't do the country any good. But we've had a, a government that's chaotic, that's divided, has, has broken just about everything they've touched. I don't know a period in history and, and you will all think about this, where almost everything is now in a worse state than when they started in government. And this is not about Labour or Tory. If if you leave your country in a in a worse state than when you came into government, you should be booted out.