Sorry to gate-crash your love-in gents, but you seem to have rather missed the point of regional differences in wages.
People in the southeast do not have 'better wages' than people in the northeast, or northwest. They have wages that reflect the higher - in some cases absurdly higher - llving costs associated with London and its hinterland.*
At present an NHS worker earning the same money in Newcastle as someone doing an identical job in Watford is, in real terms, significantly better off. I see no reason why, as a taxpayer, I should pay to maintain out-moded, left-wing ideas about uniform nationwide terms and conditions which run entirely counter to economic reality.
* I have lived and worked in northwest and southeast England and in central Scotland and I can assure you in terms of what it costs to live in each of those areas, the southeast would bring tears to your eyes.