Good Morning Britain’s Charlotte Hawkins challenged Labour’s Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy regarding the Resident Doctors strikes that have kicked off on Friday morning (November 14).

Nandy addressed the BMA (British Medical Association)’s decision to go on strike as she told the hosts: “I think most people, including junior doctors, will understand that right across the board, when you look at public sector workers, we’ve given them the biggest payrise in the last 10 months of the Labour government than the last 10 years of a Conservative government.

“More importantly, we’ve invested, done record investment into the NHS, we’ve taken criticism for raising the money to do that, but we’ve done it. As a result, waiting lists have come down, we’ve made 5 million more appointments available.

“Just this morning we were able to announce that 16,000 people have been taken off waiting lists.”

Lisa Nandy was left repeating herself in a debate with Charlotte (Image: ITV)

However, as she continued to talk, Charlotte interjected. She said: “Yeah okay, but none of that helps — sorry to interrupt, but none of that helps though.”

Nandy fumed back: “But it does help. It does help, well it does help. It helps change the working conditions that those of the National Health Service have had to put up with for far too long.”

She claimed she believes that most people, including junior doctors, would understand that and reiterated that they can’t keep offering the biggest payrises across the public sector.

Nandy added that they are asking the BMA to call off the strikes while they continue to focus on what they can do to help.

It comes as doctors are after a 26% pay increase, which the government has deemed “unreasonable” after giving out a 28.9% rise over the last two years.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has since stated the BMA is no longer a “professional voice for doctors”, claiming they are issuing “cartel-like behaviour and threaten the recovery of the NHS, and the future of the NHS.”

Doctors have been in a dispute over their pay for two years and this strike has marked their 13th so far, but it has now been reported that plans to strike once a month are also now up for discussion.

The current strike is expected to last until Wednesday morning.