Dining across the divide: ‘The cost of student loans is dissuading those of us from working-class backgrounds from going to university’

James, 32, Warwick

Occupation Junior doctor

Voting record Normally Labour, but voted Green in a recent local election. Voted Conservative in 2010 in his home constituency in County Durham. They will not get his vote ever again

Amuse bouche Learned how to fly gliders while at university. That’s how he met his partner, and they’ve been together ever since

Gareth, 58, Warwickshire

Occupation Sales manager in the chemical industry

Voting record At general elections, he almost always votes Lib Dem, and is a member of the party. Does not consider himself ideological, though

Amuse bouche Is keen on genealogy and has discovered a lot of boring farmers and hairdressers in his ancestry, plus a murderer and a Victorian scoundrel who moved to the US and used to impersonate an English lord

For starters

Gareth The restaurant staff were really nice. They opened specially for us.

James It was a five-course menu, including a bean stew that had black pudding, chorizo and ham. Delicious. For dessert, a tarta de Santiago.

The big beef

James The cost of student loans is basically dissuading those of us from working-class backgrounds from going to university.

Gareth I try not to be hypocritical, because I went to university when it was free. But I do think that the current system is about right – there needs to be a mixture of state funding and funding by the individual. First, because it seems fair that the person who gets benefit from it should pay for it. Second, because there’s been enormous growth in the number of people who go to university.

James I will finish paying off my loan one year before it is due to expire – it will take 29 years. That’s why doctors don’t now feel the loyalty to the NHS that existed historically. They feel a lot more defensive about their profession, and that shows up in the strikes. The goodwill that the NHS has been run on for so long is running out. The way the loan book has been privatised, it doesn’t work. I don’t have any savings, I will never be able to afford a house. The only way I see it going at the moment is moving to Australia.

Gareth I think he acknowledged that there should be fees for some people, but he thought medics should be a special case. Randomly, he happens to be a medic, so good for him.

Sharing plate

James We agreed that the NHS should be free at the point of delivery. He’s all for choice, I’m for choice. For patients who want to have a nice room, nice meals – knock yourself out. But the private sector will only take the stuff that’s profitable. You will never see a private company trying to do emergency medicine. It’s a loss-maker – it’s very expensive.

Gareth Healthcare free at the point of delivery is a key British value. That has to stay. Then the more interesting question becomes: how do you improve the service while minimising waste and cost? I’m not ideologically attached to the idea that the state has to deliver the service. James was very sceptical about that, and he’s a doctor. So that’s made me more cautious. I don’t know enough about it to challenge an expert in that area.

For afters

Gareth We agreed that “transphobic” is an unhelpful term, which shuts down debate. Eventually, he acknowledged that how you are perceived by other people is not your exclusive right to decide. I don’t automatically have a right to tell you that you must perceive me as X, Y, Z. Perhaps I influenced him a little bit; I hope so.

James Maybe I was being defensive in how I define gender. He thinks of it as binary in nature. Whereas I simply view it as a function of society. It is very distinct from sex. As a medical profession, we’re not always great on it. It was only 10 or 15 years ago that you’d still have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria as a psychiatric condition.

Takeaways

Related: Dining across the divide: ‘Nick’s beef was more with private schools than home schools’

James I did enjoy the discussion, and I agree with Gareth that it’s OK not to agree on things. This would probably be more difficult to do with a reader of a different paper.

Gareth We are basically two Guardian‑reading liberals who respect everybody. On some things, it was like trying to separate two pages that are stuck together.

Additional reporting: Kitty Drake

• Gareth and James ate at Tasca Dali, Warwick

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