Lesson video

- Hi, and welcome to lesson five of how does the UK political system work.

Today, we're gonna be exploring the question of how is the UK government organised? So we're gonna be looking at different government departments and their role.

Okay, so for today's lesson, you are gonna need your notes from last time, some paper, a pen, and a good pen, and a quiet place to complete the lesson.

If you need to grab any equipment or move, please do so now, pause the video, and then come back when you are ready.

Okay, so today, we're gonna have three key questions.

We're gonna look at how the government is organised.

We are gonna call what are the different, kind of different government departments are, and we're gonna look at the role of the Treasury, which is one specific government department.

Okay, so our first question is, how is the government organised? Okay, so to think about this, we're gonna start off with kind of something quite familiar to you, and we're gonna look at how your school is structured and organised, okay? And we're gonna produce what's called an organisational structure diagram.

And what I would like to do is draw a diagram to represent your school structure, okay? Think about all the different people in it, so your headteacher, your deputy headteachers, your assistant headteachers, your heads of department, your heads of the year, your teachers, your form tutors, to you, who would you start with? Who would you end with? And how do these people relate to each other? Okay? And if you don't wanna do school, then you can do another organisation that you belong to.

So a sports team, music group, et cetera.

Okay.

And if you're not too sure what I mean by an organisational structure, I've had a go at drawing one for a football club.

Okay? So if you think about about a football club you've got the person in charge of it, who's a chief executive.

Okay.

And then you have some kind of vice executives, and then kind of, a big football club might split off into two bits.

It might split off into the kind of football players, So you've got your executive for the football players and then the team manager, and then you have your head coach, and you've got your first team players, and then for the other bit of the team, okay, you've got how it runs, and how it makes its profit, et cetera.

So you've got a commercial director, a sales manager who makes sure tickets sell, you know, they sell merchandise and other things like that.

Okay? So what I would like to do is produce a school organisational structure.

So pause your video now and have a go at doing that.

Okay, well done for having a go at that.

Okay, and here is one produced by another Citizenship teacher, Mrs. White, and this shows the organisation of many, many schools.

Okay, it depends how your school is kind of organised.

So at the top, we've got the Department of Education who kind of oversees schools.

And then because of different types of schools, it branched out to a County Council or an Academy Trust.

And then you have your headteacher, your deputy headteacher, your assistant headteacher, head of year, your teacher, form tutor, you, your parents and carers.

And the important thing is, have a look at how they're all organised, okay? So while those are the top person in charge or a group in charge, everyone kind of links together to make the school work.

And this is very much like the government.

Okay? So, why do you think it's important to have a structure within an organisation? What do you think are the benefits, and what do you think could be the negatives? Okay, now you don't have to write this down if you don't want to, but you kind of want to make a list.

And maybe pause the video, and just take a couple of minutes, just have a think about what are the benefits and what are the negatives of having a structure within an organisation.

So, I've just got some thoughts here.

It gives a clear chain of command, so when something goes wrong, you know kind of where to go, gives each person a responsibility, so for example, kind of when I go to school, I'm a teacher, so I know that I've got that defined responsibility.

I know I'm a form teacher so I know I have to look after that form, et cetera.

And it allows for tasks to be overseen and directed, so I know my manager gives me things to do specifically because of my job.

She also does things because of her job, et cetera.

And it might make it a bit difficult, though, because if there's lots of people in charge, it's kind of, well, which manager do I go to? And it might cause a tension, if you think the people above you aren't supporting you well enough to do your work effectively.

Okay? So I'm sure you've got some of the same ideas, so well done for giving that, I think.

Okay, so were gonna have a look now at how the government is organised.

I'm gonna look at the key roles and the people within the government.

So I'm gonna start off kind with the Monarch, okay? And we've looked at the role of the Monarch in a previous lesson, on the difference between government and parliament.

So we know that we have a constitutional monarchy now, so that means that, we kind of have the monarchy which doesn't run the country, but does have a really important role in it.

It's kind of often quite traditional, it's often quite ceremonial, but she is technically Head of State, so this is where we will start off.

Then we have the Prime Minister.

Okay, so the Prime Minister is the leader of the government.

And currently, this is Boris Johnson.

And the Prime Minister has overall responsibility for the policy and decisions of the government.

Okay, so the Monarch would then kind of feed into the Prime Minister.

And then we have got Cabinet Ministers, okay, so the Prime Minister is supported in running the government by the Cabinet.

Okay, and the Cabinet are senior members of government who oversee the running of different government departments.

So the government is split up into lots of different departments.

And as well as being known as Cabinet Ministers, they're also known as Secretaries of State, and each week they meet to discuss issues kind of which are important, and this is called the Cabinet Meeting, and you can see in the picture there, that is where they meet, kind of usually, around the Cabinet table, at Number 10.

And then each government department is supported by Ministers.

Okay, so the Head of the Department, is kind of the Secretary of State below the Cabinet Minister, and then these are supported by Ministers, okay.

And the Minister will have a specific responsibility within the department.

For example, they'll oversee one aspect of it.

Alright, so we've got one Prime Minister, we've got 21 Cabinet Ministers, 98 other Ministers.

So you got 120 Ministers in total at the moment.

So a government department is responsible for putting a specific policy into practise, okay? So specific promises of the government are now put into practise by a department, and there are 44 departments in total, and 21 of these are overseen by Cabinet Minister.

Now I'm not gonna go through every department, 'cause that would take too long, I've just pick a few, so the Treasury is to do with money and the economy, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is to do our foreign relations with other countries, and Home Office is to do with things like national security, keeping us safe, and the Ministry of Justice is about the justice system and war on crime, defence, and things like the Army, and the Air Force, and the Navy.

The Department of Health and Social Care is health, and the NHS, caring for people, and Department of Trade is about how we trade with other countries, Department of Education is obviously education, so primary, secondary, higher education, further education, and Department for Work and Pensions, so it makes sure people have the pension, people have job, et cetera.

And then, all these people involved in these things are also Members of Parliament.

Okay, so they can become a minister because they're a Member of Parliament, because they have been elected by the people.

Not all MPs have another role, kind of many MPs work just on that, on representing their constituents, but others also have additional roles as well.

So what I would you to do now, is apply this knowledge to create a structure diagram of how the government is organised.

So just now we did with the school, we're gonna look at the government, okay? And these are things I would like you to include, the Prime Minister, the Home Office Ministers, the Ministry of Justice, the Monarchy, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Government Departments, Secretaries of State, Department for Education, okay, I'm gonna look at hierarchy, Okay, so kind of, who has the most power? Okay, and how does that feed down into different people? And what's the relationship between them? Now, if you think you can do that by yourself, then that's fine, you can pause video now, leave it on the screen and just go off and do it.

But if you think you're gonna need some help, then you can stay with me, and I'm gonna give you a model to maybe help and fill in.

So here is a model.

Okay? So we've got some letters which you can use to structure your thinking.

So again, you might pause this, and kind of work it out from there, You don't have to flick between this screen and the other screen.

So pause the video now, and have a go at that task, please.

Okay, well done for giving that a go.

Okay, so this is what I got.

So we got the Monarchy at the top, who feeds into work the Prime Minister, who feeds in this work of the Secretary of State.

Then we got Ministers, and then we've got our Government Departments, okay? So, it's probably a bit more complicated than that as well, But you know, just keeping it simple just to have an introduction, how it's organised, that works quite well.

So well done, by giving that a go.

Okay, so we're going to look at the work of one government department in particular.

Okay, and we're gonna look at the Treasury.

Okay, and can you remember what the Treasury does? Hopefully you can.

So the Treasury is concerned with money and finance.

Okay? And this is how the Treasury is organised.

Okay, so we've got the Secretary of State or the Cabinet Minister, or just to make things a little bit more complicated, The person in charge of the Treasury has a different title, they're known as a Chancellor of the Exchequer, And currently, this is Rishi Sunak, and again, you can see under Rishi Sunak, we have different Ministers who are in charge of different things within the Treasury.

Okay, so there's hierarchy within the Treasury.

And again, there'll be people below them as well, who feed into that work, and they then feed back to Rishi Sunak.

So the HM Treasury is government's economic and finance department, it oversees a number of things, including public spending, so each department's budget has, so each government department kind of has a budget, and this is the Treasury financial policy, so it looks at regulating the banks and different financial services, the tax system, so when people get paid, they pay tax, Come and you go shopping, you pay tax on things.

Infrastructure projects like building the roads, hospitals, schools, et cetera, They provide the money for these.

And the growth of the economy, so making sure that the economy is growing, and what happens when we're kind of in a recession, the Treasury will put things together to make us try and get out of a recession, or avoid a recession.

And the budget is probably the most well-known activity of the Treasury.

Okay, so each year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer goes to the Commons and outlines the budget of what they gonna do, okay? And it's symbolised by this red case, okay, so each chancellor holds the red case, and has all the paperwork in the red case.

And here's the 2020 pictures of that.

There's Rishi Sunak on his way to Parliament, kind of the House of Commons to give his budget in 2020.

So the budget is the annual decision of the government of how to spend on each government department.

Okay, so it involves a lot of balancing of income and spending.

And the UK gets it income primarily through tax.

Okay, so tax is money given to the government through things like from wages, from businesses, from our spending in the economy, et cetera.

But the UK also borrows money as well to support its income.

And in 2020 to 2021, the Chancellor divided £928 billion, which is a figure, I think it's pretty incomprehensible to think of how much money that is, but that's a lot of money, between the government departments and also paying off the national debt.

So this is a breakdown of, it's probably quite a simplistic breakdown of what the government spent, kind of it says that on the bottom, kind of figures may not sum due to rounding, okay? so it's been round up to be made it a bit simpler, okay? So I'm actually gonna pause video now and just have a look at what amounts were given to what, Okay? So education, for example, got 160 billion.

The health got 178 billion, housing and environment got 32 billion.

Okay, so quite a lot of spending going on there.

So what we'll actually to do now is have a think about if you were the Chancellor, okay? And you would be preparing the budget for 2021, okay? Which is something the Chancellor will be thinking about right now, how would you do it? So we're gonna pretend that we have a little increase in budget, okay? So we're gonna say we've got £936 billion.

Okay? And to make the task a little bit easier, what you can do is, is you can allocate the money in percentages rather than actual amount, so what percentage out of a hundred, okay? So your chart will have to add up to a hundred percent.

So you're gonna look at the government departments which are listed there, so you might wanna make a note of them, and you're gonna either produce a pie chart or a list, okay? Now, to produce a pie chart you can just draw around kind of something circular, So if you've got any Sellotape or a glass, or kind of anything at all, or you can just make a list.

Okay? And kind of have a think about who would you give the most to? Who would you give the least to? And do you think this stuff that needs funding by government that isn't already, okay? I should say this isn't everything the government funds but just to make it a little bit simpler for you, I've just put a few ideas there.

So pause the video now, have a go at that and then kind of come back to finish off the lesson.

Okay, so here is is mine, okay? So I've decided to give the most to welfare, and then health, and then housing gets the least, so you can see my pie chart, and yours might look something, hopefully, like that.

If you're doing a pie chart, well done.

So that brings a lesson to an end, okay, and hopefully, you now have a better idea of how the government is organised.

You can get examples of different government departments and explain what they do.

And you can explain the role of the Treasury, specifically.

Okay, so now the lesson is ended, please don't forget to complete the quiz afterwards to check what you've learned.

Hopefully, we kind of see you for the final lesson again, kind of have a good day, and see you again next time.

Thank you.