If you missed the programme this morning or are in need of a recap, here's a quick round-up of the top lines from today's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg:

• New Transport Secretary Mark Harper said pay rises could come if rail workers accept reforms.
• He suggested there had been progress in talks with union leaders over the planned walkouts but insisted there was not enough cash to meet workers' demands, saying "I do not have a bottomless pit of taxpayers' money to throw at this problem"
• Panellist Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the TUC, said the government could raise public-sector pay in line with inflation if it increased capital gains tax on the sale of shares and second homes to match income tax rates
• Shadow levelling-up secretary Lisa Nandy says public sector workers would be better paid under a Labour government
• Asked whether Labour would give inflation-linked pay rises, Nandy said it would be "absurd for me to open a negotiation live on television" but insisted the party wanted to see people paid enough to live on

Thanks very much for joining us.

Today's writers were Jo Couzens, Laura Gozzi, Rob Corp and Chris Giles.

Image source, UK Parliament

As we mentioned in the paper review earlier, former Health Secretary Matt Hancock has made it through to the final of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here, along with Lioness Jill Scott and Hollyoaks actor Owen Warner.

Despite Hancock's success on the show, fellow conservative Mark Harper is not impressed.

Speaking on Sky News this morning, the transport secretary said Hancock should not have gone into the jungle - regardless of how well he does on the reality show:

"If you are a member of Parliament and Parliament is sitting, I think your job is to be representing your constituents, either in your constituency or in Parliament. I don't think serving members of Parliament should be taking part in reality television programmes."

Asked whether Hancock - who was suspended as a Conservative MP after joining the show - should be allowed to return to the Tory fold, he said: "That's a decision for the chief whip."

Reality Check

Transport Secretary Mark Harper said nurses were getting "at least a £1,400 pay rise this year".

The government said this in July , externalwith increases backdated to April 2022.

However, nurses' pay has not kept up with rising prices since 2010. They have had a real terms pay cut of more than 10%.

Their pay has also failed to keep up with average earnings, both in the private sector and the public sector, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)., external

• Does the average nurse earn £34,000 a year?

Labour's shadow levelling-up secretary Lisa Nandy says that "we haven't got a militant workforce in this country, we've got a militant government".

Her comments came after it was announced nurses would take strike action in December, for the fist time in the Royal College of Nursing's 106 year history.

Nandy told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg that nurses were clapped during the pandemic, but some can now not afford to put food on the table.

You may remember that during Laura Kuenssberg's questioning of Transport Secretary Mark Harper she asked him about a specific issue raised by viewer Emily.

She says that as a new mum living near Manchester she can't rely on the train anymore.

The programme has gone back to her to find out if Harper answered her question.

Here's what she said:

Emily continues that Harper needs to improve the train service and it needs to align with the government's green agenda.

But she says at the moment trains are unusable.

Laura Kuenssberg
Presenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg

While Mark Harper, the new Transport Secretary, is certainly trying to talk a different game to his predecessor Grant Shapps - it's not entirely clear what he is actually going to do differently to try and sort out the rail strikes.

As Shapps did, he believes there has to be a quid-pro-quo - reform the railways to release cash that could then in turn be used to go towards pay.

He calls himself a facilitator when it comes to the talks but the transport secretary does have more power than that to see the parameters of the deal the operators can do.

The long-running strikes are just one more headache for the government as other workers plan to walk out.

Image source, Jeff Overs/BBC

And Rishi Sunak's backbenchers are also not happy.

Jake Berry, the former minister, told us the government only has a "narrow window" to start making a difference with voters.

He accused Levelling-up Secretary Michael Gove of starting to stir up trouble for Sunak.

Berry also said he'd join the rebellion in favour of building onshore wind. Watch this week for how ministers handle that growing revolt.

Labour's Lisa Nandy told us if they were in charge they would pay public sector workers more - but how much more?

The party is still coy about that.

Image source, Getty Images

Rail strikes have been a talking point on the programme this morning.

Further walkouts have been called before and after Christmas in a dispute over pay, job security and working conditions.

The RMT rail union has announced a series of strikes in December and January.

Previous action has had a major impact on services throughout England, Scotland and Wales.

Read more here on how the action could affect you.

Transport Secretary Mark Harper says his goal is to overhaul how the railway in Britain works.

But he says the reforms must be approved first, before pay rises are discussed:

Amongst all the politics on this week's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler popped up to wish the country's football team luck ahead of their final World Cup group match against England in Qatar.

Pointing to the fact it's the first time Wales have been in the World Cup for 64 years, she says: "We're good - we've got to believe in ourselves, we can do it.

"I'm very proud of the Welsh team," she says, urging them: "Get out there and do it for Wales."

"I need a hero, come on boys," she sings - reprising the lyrics from arguably her best-known song Holding out for a Hero.

There's a different take on Labour's plans from Conservative MP Jake Berry who says the party "doesn't have a plan" on strike action and points out that housing targets might become a "bidding war" between them and the Tories at the next election.

As the programme draws to a close for this week, it's back to the panel.

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady says Labour has set out very clear plans for growth and a very clear message to business that their models need to be built on decent work.

"That means paying people fairly, treating them fairly," she tells Laura Kuenssberg.

She adds it also means fair pay agreements in areas like social care where the majority of people earn less than £10 an hour.

Next Nandy is asked whether she would scrap the right to buy scheme.

She says she has "always believed in the right to buy your own home" but adds that the problem with right to buy is that the money "was never put back into the system so every time a home was sold it was lost from the housing stock".

"That's completely wrong," she says.

Nandy says she agree with Michael Gove that the right to buy scheme is sustainable if you replace homes like for like.

Labour supports the system but "we don't support the deliberate vandalism of our social housing stock", she adds.

Turning to the current political hot potato of mandatory housing targets for councils in England, Nandy cannot say how houses Labour would build if it won the next general election because of the "huge upheaval" in the housing market over the last few months following the fall-out from the September mini-budget.

Nandy says the impact of rising mortgage interest rates has led to developers "sitting on land" as they don't believe there is demand that justifies building.

However, Nandy repeats the commitment Labour has made to help 70% of people to own their own home and to return social housing to the second-largest form of tenure.

Nandy says nurses are going on strike because the health secretary refused to meet them over the summer to negotiate, only meeting when strike action became a real prospect.

"It's absurd - a situation where people who don't earn enough to put food on the table for their families, and who were applauded only two years ago - have to go on strike... just to get a meeting."

Nandy says she will not join the nurses on picket lines as she will be in Parliament fighting their corner, as agreed with the nurses' union.

"It's about time the government started taking workers seriously," she says.

Nandy is asked how much more money she would give public sector workers and whether she would match inflation.

She says the key is to bring inflation down, adding it would be "absurd for me to open a negotiation live on television".

Pressed on whether Labour would match inflation, she says the party want to see people paid enough to live on and fairly.

Today's second political guest is shadow levelling-up, housing and communities secretary Lisa Nandy.

She says that public sector workers would be better paid under a Labour government following the Welsh model, in which the government "treats them as partners" and which has seen Wales avoid the number of strikes seen in England.

"We also have plan to grow the economy and make sure the money goes back into people's pockets," she says, adding that Labour would invest in technology and green jobs.

Panellist Frances O’Grady says nurses are struggling and left in tears from working 14-hour shifts with no relief, looking after far too many elderly and dependent patients at once and feeling the weight of responsibility.

"It feels incredibly patronising for it [government] to be suggested that a predominantly female profession somehow can get by on another wage cut when they are £5,000 in real terms worse off than they were in 2010," she says.

Waiting lists are growing because there aren't enough people prepared to work in the NHS and people are continuing to leave which will make those lists grow, O'Grady adds.

Tory MP Jake Berry responds that he has stated he thought it was a mistake not to meet trade union leaders.

Panellist Dr Hannah Fry has been crunching the numbers on the World Cup and explains how maths can help predict an upset based on the Fifa world rankings, such as the Saudi Arabia-Argentina and the Japan-Germany results

She then says England have a 65% chance of a win in Tuesday's match with Wales.

Wales have a 35% chance of beating England, but only a 2.2% chance of winning by the four clear goals needed for them to progress to the last 16.

Dr Hannah Fry takes Harper's argument that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has had an impact on the economic situation by saying the UK was already existing in a system that was so fragile "one shock like that and everything falls apart".

This goes back much longer, she says, adding it's about prioritising what kind of country we want to live in.

Conservative MP and former party chairman Sir Jake Berry discusses Tory morale and says the PM has "quite a narrow window" to grip some of the issues and prove that we have competent.

"If we do that, I can absolutely see another victory" in 18 months, Berry says.