Lesson video

Hello, Mr. Hanson back for you today.

Another lesson and our unit, how the UK governs.

Today we're looking at lesson three and that looks at the differences between local regional and national governance.

Now for today's lesson, you are going to need the downloadable documents that are attached to this lesson.

And you are also going to need a pen and some paper.

If you've got some highlighters, you can have those at hand because they're going to be useful when reading the documents let's run.

But if you don't have them, don't worry.

And as always, can you find yourself a nice quiet working space that you are free from distractions.

So that i have your full attention for the duration of this lesson.

I'm going to give you a couple of seconds now, so you can pause the video and come back to me, once you are sorted.

So in today's lesson, we're going to explore three key elements.

We're going to look at the difference between local and central governments.

Then we're going to look at this word devolution and we're going to look up what is meant by the term devolution and what this means for UK governance.

And today going to compare the way that the UK has governed in terms of regional powers.

We'll then going to look at this and discuss the pros and cons for having devolved powers.

Now, just to give you an idea of how local regional and national governments is set out, we've got this distribution of power tree in the United Kingdom.

Now, if you haven't looked at the local government, you've got things like the County councils, the district councils then going up to the regional governance you've got mayors and you've got assemblies and authorities.

Then you move up to the national with certain parliaments in different areas of the United Kingdom.

Now, if you want to bring change about, bring about change in our society, you have to know who to influence and who to persuade, to support you and your campaign.

Now, these are all people in power.

The laws that have position and responsibility in our communities do so when we have an idea about change, we need to work out who would be best to approach.

For example, if you want to improve your local player park then the talent of parish council, would probably be your best part of contact.

But if you look at a bigger issue, such as how you deal with the COVID crisis that we're currently dealing with, then your member of parliament will be better to approach because they could bring about the issue to parliament.

Of course, it takes a lot more than just a contact to bring about change.

You need to get lots of support from a wide variety of people to show how much public opinion is on your side.

So whatever your issue, you've got to bear in mind on who to contact.

Who's the most appropriate people or person to contact.

But what does government mean? Well, government is by the means by which a group of people organise themselves and divided up authority and power in order to achieve goals.

And we call these goals policies and they usually seek to improve life for groups of people in society, often by running services.

Now it's important to consider here.

Like we mentioned, the last lessons, government and parliament are separate.

The government are the people who have been elected and they are the majority.

So they have the power.

So they hold the cabinet seats.

And they also are part of the majority in government.

Parliament is the whole group of 650 elected members of parliament When we look at government, Our first task today is to write a list of goals that governments may have to achieve in order to improve life for groups of people.

So what can the government do to help young people, the older people in the community and the environment.

So try and think of a point for each.

So pause the video now, once you've completed, come back to me with your answers.

So governments often have goals about how they can improve life for people.

And like we said, we call this goals policies.

So, they usually achieve these policies through services like the national health service.

So we could say that we ensure that citizens are felt that are kept safe and protected.

So they feel safe.

We could use services to keep the population healthy, such as the NHS.

We could make sure that young people are educated and we do that through the department of education and we could safeguard the environment by improving recycling.

So those are just some ways that the government, can set about achieving that goals their policies through, services.

So let's look up the difference between local and central government.

So if you'd like to, you could draw this table or this is available on the worksheet that is attached to this lesson.

So just two columns, local government and national government and then down the side geographical areas, roles and decision-makers.

And I like you see, I'm going to take you through the three areas here and you can just make notes in the particular area of that table.

So I'm going to look at geographic areas.

Local government has power in local areas like a town city or a County.

Whereas the central government holds power over the whole of the United Kingdom on many issues.

What roles are they informed? Well in the local government, councils apply laws set by central government through parliament.

And then the local government decides, how local services are run such as in your park.

Central government are responsible for the security and welfare for the entirety of the country.

And they set laws and policies that are applied to us all.

The decisions that they make them at a local level and local government councillors are elected by local residence, make decisions following laws set by parliament.

So they get given something called a bylaw and they have the powers to make decisions in their local area.

Whereas the central government, decisions made by the government ministers who are either MPs or Lords and they run government departments.

So you can pause the video here and complete the table.

And once you're done, come back to me and we'll whiz through the answers.

So, here is some feedback for you on some issues.

So you can just give the video a quick pause here and just make sure that your answers tally up with the answers in the table.

The main things you got to look at is local have local powers in towns, cities and counties.

Excuse me.

Whereas the national government holds issues over the United Kingdom as a whole.

The roles set out by them.

Councils apply laws, set out through the parliament and the national government are responsible for the security welfare of the entirety of the country not just a local area.

Decisions are made by counsellors and a local government.

Whereas the decisions made in a national front are made by government ministers who are MPs and our Lords who work in the government departments, as we looked at in our previous lesson on the civil service.

What I'm going to do, just so that you've got an idea of this.

I'm going to show you a quick video, which shows you the responsibilities for local national regional and the services that they provide.

But what we've got to look at is that this word devolution.

Now this is a word that you've probably never came across before.

And it's a word that is perhaps unfamiliar to you.

So what we're going to do is we're going to deconstruct what that word means.

So as a bit of a task, what I'd like you to do, first of all, is to make a list of words that begin with the letters d e so de.

And once you've came up with a maybe target four or five, do they have anything in common? And if they do, what do they have in common? So how look at the meaning of those words and is there any commonality between them.

And then there's a little bit of a sub task.

What does the word evolve mean? So what's the word evolvement.

And once you've got the words begin with de and you've got a definition of what the word evolve means, can you try and come up with a definition of what you think the word devolve means? So there's a couple of tasks there.

The first one is to think of the words beginning with de, have a look at what they have in common.

Then look at what the word evolve means.

And then based on all of that information.

what do you think the word devolve means? So you can pause the video now and complete the task and resume once you are finished.

Okay so, I've came up with some words here.

So I've got decrease, descend and detach.

So decrease means to make or become smaller or fewer in size, descend means to move or fall downwards and detach looks at leaving or separating oneself from a group or a place.

So based on that, we can look at the word devolve, devolution and we're going to use this definition here.

So, devolve means to transfer a delegate power to a lower level, especially from a central government to a local or regional administration.

So what I'd like you to do is, write that down for me, it's really important you know, what the words devolve means.

So to transfer or delegate power to a lower level, especially from a central government to a local or regional administration.

So now we know what the word devolution means.

We're going to look at how that affects the United Kingdom at a national level.

What we're going to do is, I'm going to take you through a brief history, and these are some of the key areas that have happened and key dates that devolution has affected.

So if we go back to 1997, there were referendums in Scotland and Wales and they voted on the devolution of power for both Scotland and Wales.

The results for that was in favour of having devolved powers and that led to the setting up of the Scottish parliament, what was at the time, the Welsh assembly.

If we got a 40 year, there was a referendum for London to have a directly elected mayor and to have separate devolve power.

So they had regional powers devolved to them, unlike Scotland and Wales, who have national powers devolved to them.

However, also in 1998 Northern Ireland, has their devolved powers given to them.

So now Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each have devolved powers separated from the United Kingdom.

Then it's another 14 years before something major happens and the implementation of the Scotland act in 2012 gave the Scottish parliament more powers, so more developed powers in their parliament.

Then if we go forward two more years to 2014, Scotland again had another referendum to gain complete independence from the rest of the United Kingdom.

The results of this vote was rejected by the Scottish people.

So they voted to send more to independence from the United Kingdom and make them a complete separate entity.

Two years later, the entirety of the United Kingdom held another referendum.

This time they voted on the subject of leaving the European union.

And as a whole, the United Kingdom population voted to leave the European union, which has also not as Brexit.

And I'm sure that you've heard that term in and around news for the last couple of years.

Four years later, the United Kingdom went through with the Brexit agreement and on the 31st of January left the European union.

Now, as a result of that, this means that the European union now have no governance of the United Kingdom.

And our relationship is currently still being negotiated with to with regards to movement of people and trends and all the agreements that we had need to be renegotiated in some way, shape or form.

So you can see that there's a lot happened in terms of gaining independence.

I'll try it again, independence and being given these devolved powers.

So what does that look like them? Well, without the European Union in the UK government and the Westminster parliament holds the power and they can devolve that power to nations and Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

And they can also devolve their powers to regional areas within the country that then can be given down to local councils.

So each town, city, county, area, nation has a part to play and has responsibilities that they can go with.

In terms of regional government then, in each regional area, they have a directly elected mayor and they are a combined authority.

So they're not just one place.

They are a group, they're an area and they're elected by the residents of that area.

So the mayor in partnership with the combined authorities, so the town councils exercise the powers and functions devolved from the government, set out in the local areas de-evolution deal.

So the UK parliament give places like the West of England, Greater Manchester, the Tees Valley, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, the Liverpool region, Sheffield, North of Tyne and the West Midlands devolve power to act in that areas.

So with the exception of Cornwall, all devolution deals require areas to have a directly elected Mayor.

And the government believes that the role issues clear accountability over the powers functions and funding that has devolved from national to a local level.

So there is an accountability process that the UK parliament has given the local areas here, a directly elected mayor.

And they are then accountable for the functions and funding that has devolved from the UK parliament.

Now Cornwall's deal, gives them control over things like transport skills and business support but they do not have to have a directly elected mayor.

So if we look at devolved power at a national level, the deals that have been given, have created national parliament in Scotland and Wales parliament now known as Senedd Cymru and Wales and national assembly in Northern Ireland.

Now the process transfers varying levels of power from the UK parliament to the UK's nations, but has kept authority over the devolved institutes in the UK parliament itself.

So that is easily called devolved and reserved powers which we'll look at in a moment.

But overall, the UK parliament holds the power.

Although Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have devolved powers and they do have the opportunity to act on certain areas.

Some responsibility is still kept with the UK parliament itself.

What I'd like you to do now, is if you have a look up the worksheets that has provided with this lesson, there is a resource of material to look up the UK parliament, the Welsh parliament, Scott's parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly.

And from that information on those sheets what I'd like you to do is fill in the table there and come back to me once you have done so.

So please pause the video and read the information in the worksheet, complete the table and then hit resume once you are finished.

So hopefully, you have got the following information.

So at the location, the UK parliament in Westminster in London, the Welsh parliament is known as the Senedd Cymru in Cardiff.

The Scottish parliament is located in a place called Holyrood in Edinburgh and the Northern Ireland assembly is in a place called Stormont in Belfast.

How many seats are available? So there are 650 in the UK apartment, 60 in Wales, 129 in Scotland and 19 in Northern Ireland.

And then if we look at full power, devolved power the UK parliament has full power and the other three nations have devolved power.

Now, what can they legislate? Well, the UK parliament can't legislate on everything except on devolved matters where consent is required.

So if there is a devolved matter, where they've given powers to Welsh, Scotland or Northern Ireland they can still legislate on it, as long as they get consent from that nation.

If we look at Welsh then, they can legislate on 20 areas that cover local services, things like education and training, fire and rescue services, health and transport and highways, local housing, local government and the use of the Welsh language.

And the Welsh language is really important to the people at Wales because it's given equal importance, so it will be used in Colts, it will be used on role signs and on official documents.

If you look at the Scottish parliament, again very similar education, health and social work, government housing.

Here's we've got justice and policing things like agriculture and forestry and fishing, sport and heritage and economic development.

Finally then, if we look at the Northern Ireland assembly, we can see that they have very similar devolved powers to Wales and Scotland and that they can look at health and social services.

They can look at education, they can look at local issues, environment issues and transport.

Now, it's really important to know that the powers that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have here, are devolve powers.

And what we mean by devolved powers are decisions that parliament controlled in the past, but have now been given to the separate bodies i.

e the Scottish parliament and they legislate on things like education and our health, as we've just discussed.

A reserved power, if you think like a reservation in a restaurant, it's something that you keep hold of that you don't give away.

The reserve power is a power that has been retained by the UK parliament in Westminster.

And these matters include, amongst others being UK defence and foreign policy.

And what that means is the UK parliament have to legislate on this.

They cannot devolve those powers to the regions or the nations.

What I want us to look at finally, as I will and have less than task is to think about what are the advantages and disadvantages of having these devolved powers.

So you can go from a local level all the way up to a national level, but what are the good points of perhaps bad points about having these devolved powers? So you may want to think about, what powers do they get? Can we make decisions timely? Who makes the decisions at each level? Are there any limitations on the power? And is there any cost available or any cost implications given to the devolved nations our regions? So what I'd like you to do is pause the video here and complete a table.

If you wish, I'll spare that information anywhere ship from you feel comfortable with, but what are the disadvantages and advantages of having devolved powers? So pause the video now and press resume once you're finished.

Okay.

So I've just given you some advantages and disadvantages here.

So devolution makes it possible for decisions to be taken at a more appropriate level.

For example the problems of agriculture are different in Scotland to England.

So giving those powers to Scotland, to legislate on areas of agriculture or transport is a really good idea because they get to set that on laws in a way that fits that area.

Another advantage might be that ministers and civil servants based England have knowledge of a particular area, but it's not as good as a local politician or a local counsellor or perhaps people up in Scotland or Wales and Northern islands of knowing the local area.

So having that developed power with the local people is a really good thing because they have good understanding and knowledge of the issues in that particular place.

And then following on from that, devolution allows the cultural identity and national feeling in each part of the UK.

So for example with Wales, have an equal importance with the Welsh language is really important because it allows the cultural identity to grow.

If we then look at disadvantages an extra cost has been implicated here because the new parliament buildings have been built in Edinburgh and in Cardiff.

So that comes at a cost to the taxpayer.

There might be conflict devolved government and the UK government, perhaps they think that they don't have enough power, or they feel frustrated with perhaps legislation coming through.

And the organisation of government and decision-making is more complicated because some decisions are devolved and others are reserved.

So there are issues that are reserved that the devolved powers can not get involved with that has to be with the UK parliament.

So you can see that there is conflict that can happen in that respect.

So what have been learned there then? Well, hopefully, we've answered these three key questions.

We've looked at the difference between local and central governance.

So we looked at who was involved there and we've looked at this new term devolution and we looked at what this means for UK governance.

And then we've looked at the comparison between national governments and looked at the pros and cons of devolved powers.

Now, as always, if you'd like to share any of your work, if you'd like to, then please ask your parent or your carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and using the hashtag learnwithOak and I'll certainly keep my eyes peeled for all of your brilliant work that you've completed in this lesson.

There's only one last thing that I've got for you today.

And again, just as always, can you complete the exit quiz just to make sure that you've completely understood everything that we've gone through in today's lesson.

You've worked really, really hard and there's some really hard terms in this lesson and hopefully you stick with it and completed that exit quiz.

So you can completely consolidate your learning on this topic.

I will join you again next time and hopefully I will see you all then.

Thanks for watching.

Bye bye for now.