Devolution in A-Level Politics

hi my name&#39;s Ollie and in this politics explained video I&#39;m going to go through everything you need to know about Devolution in a level politics so that&#39;s not just all the knowledge you need to know but also the key arguments and debates and essay questions you could be asked and the key arguments on either side of those debates giving you some real help with the analysis and the evaluation so in terms of the different sections of this video because it&#39;s going to be a pretty long video I&#39;m going to start by going through the kind of sections of the specification this covers and some past essay questions and like the key debates that is gonna it&#39;s gonna address or that can come up in um in the possible exam then gonna quickly introduce why and when division was introduced from there I&#39;m going to go through how power is devolved in each country so in Scotland Wales Northern Ireland and England with England obviously being um quite a bit different um from there I&#39;m going to go into some kind of key debates on Devolution and some overall notes as well as well it&#39;s giving you some really good examples for a policy difference and kind of increasing tension as well as covert is a really good recent example um and recent um bit of knowledge for how Devolution has changed um and then finally from there we&#39;re going to look at some other debates over Devolution so that&#39;s going to be a on the impact of devolution um on Thursday on Democracy then on the unity of the UK and also on economic and policy economics and policy impacts and then finally going to look at potential further reforms to Devolution so this is on the kind of debates about refer the reform part and that&#39;s looking at should there be further Devolution to existing devolve body should there be an English Parliament should there be Regional assemblies that kind of thing and at the end we&#39;re going to circle back um to some of the key essay questions and some Source questions that have come up just kind of recap um and recap what you need to know for the exam um so the PDF which you should be seeing up there and we&#39;ll have all the notes um for this video you can find in the first link in the description to on the politics explained website where you can also find a link um to any tutoring if you&#39;re interested as well as a lot of free and paid resources such as essay plans essays um and kind of other resources that are on there to help you with their politics available so yeah without further Ado let&#39;s get into it so first off looking at the kind of parts of the specification this covers this is a pretty long video and a very long lesson because it really covers a lot of content so the key thing covers is Devolution right and that&#39;s in the Constitution topic of the UK government of the first part of the UK government topic that&#39;s Devolution to um all bodies in the UK so the devilish in England Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland um as well as kind of how there&#39;s been further Devolution in in the last decade effectively and then finally the debates over whether the evolution should be extended further in England and also an including some debates about whether it should be excluding kind of whether it should be um Extended further in Scotland Wales and Northern mind as well I think that&#39;s quite important to consider as well in terms of potential um essay questions and kind of key debates that can come up um the third there&#39;s kind of two key types so the first one is going to be on the impact of devolution in the UK um so far and whether it&#39;s been a success so you could have something such as um to what extent has the really should Devolution be seen as a success or a bit more complicated one um such as evaluate the view that diversion has been good for Wells in Scotland but not for England and Northern Ireland so that&#39;s really looking at the success of devolution and the second one you&#39;re gonna get is in relation to further reforms so that&#39;s one such as evaluate the view that Devolution um reforms haven&#39;t gone far enough and that could also be more specific just to England so evaluate the view that there should be further division reforms to England or evaluate the view there there should be an English Parliament so there&#39;s two types of questions they&#39;re the ones you&#39;re going to be want to practicing and possibly making essay plans for there will be essay plans um before the final exam on the politics displaying website which you can purchase but also it can be useful um to make yourself so yeah they&#39;re the kind of key questions you can get asked um and it&#39;s also quite like this colorful Source question because it is a very difficult topic and one that a lot of students are probably going to go into the examine with not that much information it is maybe more likely to come up in a source question as well so starting off how when and why was Devolution introduced so how when was Diva introduced Devolution introduced so it&#39;s in included in Labor&#39;s 1997 election Manifesto um and after Labor&#39;s kind of landslide victory in that election referends are held in each of the proposed evolved bodies um on whether those kind of devolved bodies the population of our bodies wanted Devolution and it was voted yes in Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland in Northern Ireland it was kind of part of the Good Friday agreement um which really brought an end to the violence of the troubles um but in that was kind of mechanisms for Devolution as well um and then parliament pass acts um which kind of set up the devolve bodies why was it introduced is a bit more complicated um it was partly to provide an expression for nationalism especially within Scotland which obviously um if you know about the Scottish independence referendum has a significant nationalist movement um to silence calls for Independence which are of course coming from Scotland at that time um and also just to satisfy the cause for greater autonomy and and democracy even if they were from some people who didn&#39;t even want independence some people just wanted greater autonomy and greater local democracy in the UK and then it was also part of um new Labor&#39;s wider constitutional reform program of modernizing and democratizing Britain um not and it wasn&#39;t just in terms of kind of Science and calls for Independence and delivering more democracy it was also hoped that it would result in improved public services and economic conditions so now we&#39;re going to go into um each country in detail kind of first with Scotland then um then I think Wales then Northern Ireland then England kind of looking at how divisions developed in them um the powers that they have now um and some other notes for each of them and potential further reforms so starting off with Scotland how has Devolution developed in Scotland um so the Scottish Parliament was created by the Scotland Act of 1998 which gave the devolved body significant legislative and tax varying powers and Scotland because of its kind of significant independence movement because of its um significant nationalism was given the most powers out of all of the evolved bodies and it still has the most powers out of all the devolved bodies so that included control over most public services or health education Justice and can be seen as service division but it&#39;s a useful kind of phrase that you can use to describe it and so the way it&#39;s set up is the parish reserve for Westminster were listed such as defense macroeconomic policy uh foreign policy constitutional matters and the less the rest of them were reserved for Scotland until 2007 labor was in power but from 2007 the SMP has been in power um either in minority in Coalition or once in majority government as well with Nicholas sturgeon was first Alex salmon is the first Minister um for the SNP but now Nicholas surgeon he&#39;s become a very key figure in UK politics another key thing that happened in relation to Scotland um in race in the way that division developed was the 2014 Scottish independence referendum um so there&#39;s an independence referendum so in Scotland in 2014 it led to a kind of surprisingly High support for independence of 45 and in the run-up to that to kind of satisfy or kind of um try and prevent them going for Independence Scotland was given more powers and it&#39;s been given more power since um also to kind of reflect the cause for greater economy that can be seen in that Independence referendum result um and in particular the Scotland Act of 2016 which gave the Scottish Parliament further Powers particularly in the area of tax raising so they had the power to set all income tax rates and bans which interestingly they&#39;ve recently used um as you&#39;ll see in the notice later on and this can now be seen as fiscal Devolution so Scotland now has a lot of powers so looking at what powers well and now the Scottish Parliament now does have um it has power the most power of all the devolved bodies it controls key public services including health and social policy key welfare benefits um education environment policy law home Affairs Economic Development it also has significant fiscal Powers controlling income tax rates and bans and the right to 50 of all vat race in Scotland so now on like Holly rude raises about so Hollywood is a Scottish Parliament and raises about 60 of the money that is spent and so using that power the Scottish government recently increased the higher and top rates of income tax so that both rates are now two percent higher than the rest of the UK so that shows how they&#39;re using their powers to create different policy um that reflects the views of their voters um in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK um and the Scottish Parliament also now has key Constitutional Powers so it controls its own composition and electoral system and since the Scottish at Scotland Act of 2016 it can only be abolished with a referendum making it a permanent part of the UK Constitution the 2016 Scotland act also enshrined the Sewell convention into law meaning that Westminster has to ask Hollywood every time before legislating on a devolved matter such as health or education and so it needs the consent um of the Scottish Parliament final thing I&#39;ve included just for Scotland is something that happened very recently in November 2022. so there was a really important Supreme Court ruling in 2022 um in relation to another Scottish independence referendum so it wasn&#39;t really clear who could legislate for an independence referendum in Scotland um as parliamentary sovereignties that&#39;s the UK Parliament is important but often disputing relating to Scotland especially kind of in competition with popular sovereignty in Scotland so what the other people want in Scotland which obviously Nicholas sturgeon the s p were kind of really championing um the first Independence referendum was agreed um or legislated by a special agreement between the Scottish government and the UK government and then passed by both parliaments to kind of um give it legitimacy um that hasn&#39;t been there hasn&#39;t been agreement like that for the for a second my friend and the second Independence referendum with the UK government kind of saying no to one um the Scottish government however tried to suggest that they could just hold one themselves um despite that and sought to argue they could legislate for a referendum themselves under the powers of the Scotland act what happened in November 2022 is that the UK Supreme Court ruled that the Scotland act um doesn&#39;t give the Scottish Parliament the power to unilaterally legislate for an independence referendum instead it&#39;s still a reserve power of the UK Parliament and therefore the consent of the UK Parliament is necessary so Scotland Khan Scottish government and Parliament can&#39;t legislate for a referendum on his own so it kind of not only showed the power of the UK Supreme Court to clarify the powers of different evolved bodies um but also the continued validity of the part of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and the fact that the kind of extent of constitutional control in Scotland shouldn&#39;t be overstated in terms of potential future reforms of devolution in Scotland there really aren&#39;t that many because it&#39;s got so many Powers already so it could be taken to Devo Max um so that&#39;s the kind of Maximum Devolution that it could be taken to before you before you move to Independence so the maximum amount of powers um and interestingly a lot of polls suggests that if there was a second Independence referendum that Scottish people would vote to leave um to leave the UK so it really is an interesting point in Scottish and UK politics um where there are really high courts of nationalism the breakup of the UK could be could definitely happen in the next next few decades not only from Scotland but also from Northern Ireland to interested me um but obviously the more powers that devolved to Scotland the more pertinent the West Lothian question becomes we&#39;re going to go through that one later in the video um and also the kind of Greater differences there are between Scotland and the rest of the UK which can be problematic um in terms of democracy okay so now moving on to Wales so Wales started with far fewer Powers than Scotland or Northern Ireland as there was very little National sentiment in Wales and the 1997 referendum on Welsh Devolution was very close so there was a majority of just kind of 0.5 so 50.5 on just a 50 turnout so pretty much only 25 support within the country for it um if you take into account the turnout um at first Wales was therefore only given um the Welsh assembly and had no legislative powers or first minister so it&#39;s only granted administrative devolution over the years however Wales has gained a lot more powers in response to Growing nationalism and public support for Devolution and that&#39;s particularly after the 2011 wealth Devolution referendum which saw a 64 vote for primary educative powers and the 2017 Wales act which gave Wales further powers and renamed the Welsh assembly the Welsh Parliament since 1997 labor have always been in power um in Wales either on their own or in Coalition Mark Drakeford is the current first Minister um you might know him from kind of gaining particular importance during covert as well as diverged in some policies from the rest of the UK so which powers does Wales now have especially since the 2017 Wales act the world&#39;s Parliament has gained a lot more Powers though it still has fewer Powers than the Scottish Parliament and the northern Irish Parliament as with Scotland and Northern Ireland the powers reserve for Westminster are now set out with the Scottish Parliament able to legislate on the rest um on the rest sorry that should say the Welsh Parliament with the Welsh Parliament able to legislate on the rest so it can be seen as service Devolution in the way that Scotland originally had the Welsh assembly Now controls Health and Social Services education the environment housing Economic Development and its own composition and elections among other things and in terms of kind of fiscal Powers it collects 10 of Wales income tax and can vary the bans and rates for this 10 percent it still doesn&#39;t control Law and Order though which contrasts um with Scotland including policing and legal jurisdiction um like the Scottish Parliament does as I said and that&#39;s because the UK government blocked in and effectively said no Welsh Independence is growing in popularity with some poles over 30 um support and that may lead to Greater Devolution in Wales with calls for Wales to have the same Powers as Scotland currently has um this also may have been influenced by the covert period in which you saw kind of whales diverging from England and the rest of the UK significantly and kind of demonstrating that it could do so effectively and successfully especially at points doing so more successfully than England so now moving on to Northern Ireland evolution in Northern Ireland has developed pretty differently in large part due to the specific context of Northern Ireland and the history of the troubles in Northern Ireland so it was introduced in 1998 as part of a broader peace process between Catholics and Protestants um between nationalists and unionists following the 1998 Good Friday agreement and power sharing was really key to this process so power sharing between the two communities so the executive must be led by a first Minister and Deputy first Minister um which have to be from different communities um and several key decisions including the budget and program for government require Cross Community Support so kind of can&#39;t function without that cross community support and because of that it often kind of hasn&#39;t functioned very well so government installment is very fragile with frequent suspensions in which the parties refuse to work together in government during these suspensions government functions um other site are kind of decided directly by the government in westminster&#39;s offendedly direct rule um during which some during some significant changes have been made including the legalization of same-sex marriage the Norris Northern Irish government has been suspended since February 22 so it&#39;s currently suspended for the first time in May 2022 sin fame became the largest party but the dup refused to nominate a speaker and former government um with the leader of the um Michelle O&#39;Neill as first minute so that&#39;s kind of why it&#39;s being shot down because you need power sharing if that power sharing isn&#39;t agreed to a certain time you don&#39;t have a government so what powers does Northern Ireland now have um in 1998 Northern Ireland was given as Scotland was primary legislative control over areas not reserved for Westminster so in the same way that Wales has now apart from corporation tax and policing and Justice being devolved the north northern Irish assembly hasn&#39;t really gained um many more Powers since and it still lacks major tax raising Powers so like Wales it now has service to Evolution and controls Health and Social Services and kind of a lot of the similar areas of policy um previously mentioned for Scotland and Wales um and I can also legislate on some Reserve matters with the support of the Northern Ireland secretary so Northern Ireland secretary is in the UK government in terms of potential few potential future reforms it&#39;s kind of unlikely because unionists are very opposed to um to further Devolution um a referendum on reunification with the Republic of Ireland is possible though especially as it&#39;s now estimated that Catholics outnumber Protestants um in Northern Ireland so finally moving on to England which is which is quite different to the other three so how&#39;s the evolution developed in England other kind of well there actually you should um see um one of the local males Mayors in England that&#39;s Andy Burnham who&#39;s kind of gained quite a lot of publicity and popularity during covert um unlike the other 12 bodies England doesn&#39;t have a parliament and evolution is England in England is defined by variation in inconsistency so certain powers would devolve to the greater London Authority in 1998 but in the rest of England there&#39;s a kind of real Patchwork of the great of arrangements with many areas having no Devolution and some areas having more than others new labor proposed Regional assemblies in the early 2000s which were pretty big areas um supposed to be pretty big areas of division within England so for example the Northeast um the Southwest that kind of thing um but it was dropped after 2004 referendum on a region assembly in the north east of England received a 78 Novo so a pretty conclusive rejection by the electorate um following that the Coalition and then the conservative government under Cameron um sought to promote the northern Powerhouse which is a key phrase of George Osborne um the chancellor in the Coalition promoting transport links in Greater investment and kind of as part of that they introduced city regions with Metro Mayors including in Manchester Sheffield and Liverpool um with as I said neighbors Andy Burnham being the most high profile only seven city regions have been created um while some have actually been kind of shot down with Hartlepool and Stoke scrapping them and returning to traditional local government so which powers does England know how I&#39;m going to split this into um looking at first London and then Sid the other city regions so that&#39;s a picture of city car not there I&#39;m the current London mayor and London has the most of all powers in England controlled by a directly elected mayor and an elected London assembly so London Mayors are important political figures um so citycon&#39;s a current one before when you had Boris Johnson who obviously then became the Prime Minister and Ken Livingston the great London Authority has strategic responsibility and power over policing transport and economic development so of course not as much as I have Scotland Wales or Northern Ireland but considering that um London has a massive population and is economically extremely important that is still very important devolution um and it&#39;s been able to kind of introduce some reforms because of that for example Kevin Livingston introduced the congestion charge and free travel for young people um which had like very big impacts on people&#39;s lives in London um city regions are modeled in ways in many ways on London and intended to boost Regional economies so each City region has a kind of bespoke arrangement um and part and kind of negotiates those powers on a bespoke basis so greater Manchester kind of probably has the most out of any of the um other city regions and it&#39;s kind of blazed uh a trail in gaining substantial control over Health um they&#39;re the focus of most deals in city regions on transport infrastructure and other areas linked to generating economic growth such as education business business retention skills that kind of thing um interest needed the evolution of some healthcare policy to Greater Manchester has been linked to a modest increases in life expectancy so you see kind of some evidence of success which I&#39;m going to look through in a lot more detail um just in in a moment in the video um the city region deals are less substantial the evolution as to Scotland or Wales um and they&#39;re only administered Devolution um so control over implementation rather than legislative division they don&#39;t have their own parliaments so the final thing to look at is the West Lothian question and English votes for English laws which is another kind of um or was another type of division in England so power being devolved to Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland raise the West Lothian question and that was kind of the question like it was questioned why Scottish MPS should be able to vote on English matters in the UK Parliament that don&#39;t affect their constituents for example on Healthcare in England um whilst English MPS can&#39;t do the same in the Scottish Parliament and in order to tackle that ever was introduced in 2015 and that allowed English MPS to veto any legislation just affecting England from being passed it didn&#39;t allow them to kind of make their own laws just for England but they did get a veto on anything just affect the England it wasn&#39;t used that often so only in one third of bills in the 2015-2017 parliament um it may have become more significant if a government was elected with a majority in the UK but not in England because that kind of England veto would have become a lot more important and used a lot more especially kind of in a very um in a very kind of political way um but it was criticized for creating two tiers of MPS adding unnecessary complications and not providing a viable expression for English Identity or kind of nationalism and was scrapped by Boris Johnson&#39;s government in July 2021 but still on the syllabus and you can definitely still introduce it um because it is a quite important area or a potential reform future form if it could be reintroduced and it&#39;s quite an important area where Devolution was introduced okay so I&#39;m now going to go into some overall notes on Devolution that you need to know so rather than being specific to each country um so that&#39;s starting off with the Barnet formula so this is pretty important and the Barnet formula is the system used to determine the amount of funding given to each divorce body so to Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland was originally drawn up as a short-term mechanism in 1979 and doesn&#39;t take into account relative need so for example Wales receives less money than Scotland despite being poorer kind of less per head of the population with England effectively subsidizing the other three nations which hits the prime areas of England the hardest so obviously England kind of he&#39;s also slightly warped with fact that London is the Richer part of the UK but there&#39;s some very deprived areas in England as well um and they&#39;re really kind of hit quite hard by this because in the block grants um they&#39;re given to Scotland Wales Northern Ireland um that they get more per head of the population than England does especially so for example in um 2021 public spending per person in the UK as a whole was thirteen thousand four hundred and fourteen pounds per person and in England it was two percent below that UK average in Scotland it was 11 above in Wales at six percent um above another blind it was 14 Above So neither labor nor the conservatives are sought to replace it despite it kind of being quite an arbitrary mechanism um fearing political repercussions from voting Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland and in the Scottish independence referendum all three parties in Westminster pledged their support to continue it on the other hand Nigel farage criticized it and argued it should be scrapped when he was leader of ukip as he saw it being unfair to the population of England in terms of attitudes to Devolution there was kind of a kind of just kind of wave to in terms of support for Devolution up until Boris Johnson so since Tony Bett introduced the evolution in 1997 all UK prime ministers have been supportive of it with further Devolution to Scotland Wales Northern Ireland on the under the coalition government and conservative governments of Cameron and May Evolution continued to be seen as positive in terms of democracy um and really key in keeping the union together um in the face of growing nationalism especially in Scotland with the 2014 Independence referendum Boris Johnson kind of really differed from this um describing Devolution as a disaster and Tony Blair&#39;s biggest mistake in November 2020 and failing to work closely with devolved bodies when in power with very frequent clashes with Scotland and Wales in particular over covert policies and constant criticism of Nicholas sturgeon in particular this trust seemed to continue Boris Johnson&#39;s approach once she wasn&#39;t in power for that long so she really couldn&#39;t do much but Rishi sunak has sought to pull back from like it somewhat since becoming um prime minister supporting a more Cooperative approach that&#39;s also difficult to see where he&#39;s going to go because he hasn&#39;t been in power for that long um covid-19 was really kind of important for devotion the development of devolution in the early months of the of the covert pandemic policy was very similar across all parts of the United Kingdom with the Prime Minister and first Ministers of each devolved country um all participating in joint meetings up until early June as time went on however policy really began to diverge and there were tensions between the leaders of different parts of the UK England and Northern Ireland for example lifted restrictions after the first lockdown quicker than Wales in Scotland um opening for example non-essential retail as well as pubs and restaurants and other differences followed especially in relation to education at different points in the pandemic different parts of the United Kingdom also had different levels of success in managing the spread of the virus so covid was really kind of a kind of almost a scientist experiment where you really saw the differences in Devolution there was real scope for different um for differences in policy in a way that people really felt in their lives the division was having a big impact um so especially due to the nature of cover being able to spread between populations of each devolved body this led to increased tensions and criticisms so Nicholas dungeon for example criticized Boris Johnson for using the covert crisis as a political weapon and repeating restrictions too quickly Mark Drakeford first minister in Wales accused Boris Johnson of disrespecting the people of Wales um and called the PM really really awful for neglecting the Welsh population in the way he formulated and announced covert policies and there was also criticism within England so Andy Burnham uh Metro mayor in Greater Manchester very publicly criticized the UK government in October 2020 failing to provide sufficient financial support to businesses forced to shut down by government policies in the second lockdown so he was there representing businesses in Greater Manchester and covert also led to devolved bodies becoming um the leaders of devolved body becoming a household names and gaining notoriety due to public announcements and poly decisions that had a tangible tangible impact on people&#39;s lives so diversion itself became far more visible and high profile so what I&#39;ve got now is um two useful examples of policy difference two pretty detailed examples so the first one is higher education as education is an area of policy controlled by all the evolved bodies higher education is a really useful example to show this policy difference this is particularly um as the conservative party has been power in England so a right-wing brexit supporting government um whilst in in the other 12 bodies there&#39;s been more left-wing um governments especially in Scotland and Wales so in England the coalition government increased tuition fees up to 9 250 pounds per year for home students and scrapped most grants so um yeah so 9 250 pounds per year if you&#39;re an English student going to University um that&#39;s what you have to pay go to university in England in Scotland tuition fees for homeschooling home students were scrapped in part by the um neighbor lib Dem coalition government in 2001 and then completely by the s p in 2008 so if you&#39;re a Scottish government that&#39;s got a student sorry going to Scottish University you don&#39;t pay any tuition fees that&#39;s a really big difference in policy and really big impact um difference in impact on on people&#39;s lives which I&#39;m sure a lot of you watching this video um will kind of feel in in a couple of years in Wales tuition fees for home students are capped at 9 000 pounds per year and there&#39;s a thousand pound Grant to help with living costs for all students so similar to the to England but a bit more help um a bit more kind of support especially in terms of Grants those grants were largely scrapped by England um have been scared by England in Northern Ireland by contrast tuition fees are capped at 4 630 pounds per year um for home shoot so pretty much you&#39;re paying half if you&#39;re from Northern Ireland it can go into a northern Irish University so that really shows um differences in policy and how Devolution does have a bigger big impact on people&#39;s lives Health isn&#39;t also a really useful example of policy difference in terms of health policy you can pick a number of things to look at um but I kind of decided to look at kind of prescription charges there&#39;s prescription charges in in England but not in the other devolved bodies um in terms of um financial support for the cost of um the elderly there&#39;s a lot more in Scotland Wells and Northern Ireland than there is in in England um and greater Manchester is also already a useful example for this so in 2015 the greater Manchester City region um was given devolved control over the health budget um which should be seen as administrative Devolution with the implementation um devolved rather than any um let&#39;s do powers so much of the house policy is similar to the rest of England but there have also been changes for example they have a more joined up approach to care and greater funding for mental health care relative to other Healthcare funding so that&#39;s kind of a real example where you do see that policy difference and different impacts on people&#39;s lives um because of devolution okay so now moving on to debates over the evolution and this is really where we&#39;re going to be getting into the analysis part of your essays so real key arguments you can make in relation to Devolution in time in terms of answering the essay questions that you can be asked so proof like so far we&#39;ve been looking at knowledge now really going into analysis so in terms of debates over Devolution first looking at the impact of devolution on Democracy then the impact of devolution on the unity of the UK and then the impact of devolution on in terms of Economic and policy impacts and these are three kind of headings that you could use in an essay so for example you said you had an essay evaluate the argument that derision is being a success you do the first paragraph on Democracy second paragraph on Unity of the UK third paragraph on economic and policy impacts with for and against arguments in each and a evaluation in each then at the end in your conclusion come into an overall judgment in relation to the question which obviously you should have in your introduction as well um so starting with the impact of devolution on Democracy so the arguments that Evolution has had a positive impact to democracy is that Devolution is allowed for more effective representation with devolved bodies being able to respond to the concerns of their electorates so that can be seen in the differences in policy in the areas of covert education Healthcare that um just went through the more proportional electoral systems um in Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland that&#39;s AMS and STV have led to a more representative mix of parties as well and the UK Parliament still theoretically has the power to remove the powers of the devolved bodies and is therefore still theoretically Sovereign so UK parliamentary sovereignty can be seen as a kind of key part of democracy in the UK and it still can be said to be sovereign on the other hand some argue that parliamentary sovereignty has actually been undone and undermined by Devolution by moving decision-making power away from the UK Parliament which is elected by the whole of the UK further turnout and devolved assembly elections is generally low um so 63.5 in the 2021 Scott elections around the same in the 2022 nor marriage assembly elections but just 46.6 in the 2021 Senate so that&#39;s the Welsh Parliament elections so it can be argued also that the evolution undermines equal citizenship um in the UK as divergences in policy mean that different citizens have different access to healthcare education Etc and are subject to different laws fiscal Devolution can also be argued to undermine redistribution of resources from richer to poorer areas whilst the Barnet formula can be seen as unfair and undemocratic so they&#39;re the arguments on either side in terms of democracy and as I said at the start of video you can download um the PDF that you should be seeing up there on the politics explained website to kind of look those through those in a bit more detail in terms of the impact of devolution on the unity of the UK the arguments that Devolution has had a positive impact on the unity of the UK is that no nationalist movement has yet achieved Independence and it can be argued that Devolution has satisfied some demands for self-government and therefore help to avoid the breakup of the UK Devolution has also led to a relatively stable peace in Northern Ireland providing the framework for building long-term change away from um what came before in terms of the the conflict the troubles and recent increase in support for Independence can partly be attributed to the unpopularity the conservative government in the UK rather than due to the evolution itself in terms of arguments that division has had a negative impact on the unity of the UK the asymmetric nature of the evolution so different powers for different parts of the UK um can be seen as undermining the unity of the UK as different citizens have different levels of representation and are subject to different laws and different policies it can also be argued that Devolution has fueled increased nationalism and calls for independence by showing the ability of Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland to govern themselves and giving nationalist parties and politicians a platform so the s p has been empowering in Scotland since 2007 and almost achieved Independence in 2014 since then um support among the Scottish population for Independence has increased with polls now suggesting there is a majority support for Independence you also see support for Welsh Independence growing um and in Northern Ireland the more radical Sinn feiners became the largest party in the Nationalist block um and was the largest party following the 2022 Northern Irish assembly elections um and especially more recently uh relations between devolved bodies and leaders and the UK government have been very strained and fragmented with tensions and a lack of cooperation so that can be really seen as undermining the unity of the UK and that was especially seen during covert finally looking at the economic and policy impacts of devolution so on the one hand the arguments that the evolution has had a positive economic and policy impact firstly the scope for experimentation means that some policies such as the ban on smoking in public spaces um have been tried in Scotland and other devolved bodies and then adopted across the whole of the UK so it can have those kind of positive um policy impacts in terms of experimentation Devolution has also allowed for policy that reflects the interests of local populations and can be seen as commuting in the policy Divergence is over covert Healthcare and education so for example as I said the Scottish government recently increased the higher and top rates of income tax so that both rates are now two percent higher than the rest of the UK in some areas more effective policy making can also be seen as the result of devolution for example in Greater Manchester greater control over Health has correlated with modest increases in life expectancy in some cases on the other hand arguments that divisions has a negative impact in terms of economics and policy there hasn&#39;t really been that much Devolution dividend in terms of Economic and policy improvements with devolved bodies even falling behind in some areas and generally just being similar to England um it&#39;s got his education for example has been drastically Changed by the s p but Scotland has since fallen behind England in the Pisa rankings so the program for international student assessment which kind of measures the success of different um different education systems in the world it can be argued that Evolution undermines equal citizenship as I kind of mentioned also in the Democracy um part as Divergence and policy mean that different systems of different access to different Healthcare education Etc and are subject to different laws that can be seen is a real negative in terms of economics and policy and some argue that evolve bodies particularly the SMP Focus too much on Independence rather than day-to-day policy making okay the final thing I&#39;m going to touch on in this video is potential further reforms the Devolution so that&#39;s both to existing devolved bodies and the potential creation of dual bodies particularly in England so in terms of arguments about further Devolution to existing divorce bodies arguments forefather Devolution to existing evolved bodies include devolved bodies have shown that they can run Public Service systems of decide policy effectively especially during the Kobe crisis brexit allows a lot of policy areas that used to be gotten by the UK by the EU sorry to be given to the world bodies including in already developed areas such as Agriculture and energy though Wales is smaller than Scotland and more closely integrated with England there&#39;s no reason why Cardiff shouldn&#39;t be given many of the powers that Hollywood in Scotland already enjoys there&#39;s also significant scope for more fiscal Devolution and particularly to Wales Northern Ireland and city regions in England further division or further division able to discourage Scotland from voting for Independence in terms of arguments against um further Devolution to existing the world bodies further Evolution especially in terms of tax raising powers wrestling into greater disparities in the public services offered to different UK citizens and therefore further undermines UK or risks further undermining equal citizenship whilst also reducing burden sharing between richer and poorer regions in the UK further um another point is to devolve bodies already hold significant amounts of power and there&#39;s not really much public support for that increasing um whilst now you can also argue that default bodies haven&#39;t really proved that they can really the the benefits of devolution are that high in terms of kind of Economic and political benefits and finally many areas of Regulation such as food and safety standards and environmental targets arguably better protect people if they&#39;re nationally um if they&#39;re National policies and also limit the burden on businesses in terms of further Devolution to England I&#39;m going to first look at some overall arguments I then look at kind of specific possible policies so um in terms of overall Arguments for further Devolution to England the evolution is currently asymmetric with England underrepresented within the context of the whole of the UK and this is especially important as it holds the majority of the UK&#39;s population further lead the evolution to England could help solve the what&#39;s loathing question and give an outlet for nationalism within England and therefore present it being used and manifested in divisive ways such as it&#39;s been argued that happened during the 2016 brexit referendum in terms of arguments against further Devolution to England it can be argued that none of the proposed methods for representing England are practical um another ones we&#39;re going to look at in a moment um there&#39;s also little public appetite for further Devolution to England and other measures to be taken to better represent the English population instead of further deviations they can include kind of um reintroducing and adapting English very English laws and scrapping the Barnet formula for example in terms of um for the reforms to England one of the key ones suggested ones is an English poem so items foreign English parliament are that they would complete the illusion with the UK making it symmetrical and granting the English population the same level of representation that the rest of the UK has it would also create a more coherent system of devolution with the federal UK Parliament responsible for uk-wide issues and then each part of the UK having its own um having its own Parliament to control issues that only pertain to that specific country um it would also give English identity and interests effective political and institutional expression and could be combined with the codification of the Constitution to establish clear relations between the UK government and the government of the formation on the other hand in terms of arguments against an English Parliament an English poem would only serve to create another layer of government and would create tensions between the English Parliament and um English Parliament English government and between them and the uk-wide government with the former challenging the latter it wouldn&#39;t credit coherental equal system as England is much bigger than Scotland um Wales on Northern Ireland and holds 85 percent of the UK&#39;s population further federalism arguably worked best when there is no dominant state or region there&#39;s also no real support for an English pilot within England um and arguments between London and other component Nations over funding and policies really wouldn&#39;t go away um also it can be argued that some of those proposing a federal Britain and English Parliament perhaps just using it um using the issue to secure a codified Constitution which is what they really want rather than seeing it as a desirable goal in itself a final proposed reform to Devolution in England is further Regional Devolution nuclear so that&#39;s in terms of city regions and Regional assemblies rather than kind of Devotion to the whole of England so on the one hand it can be argued that more city regions or Regional assemblies would bring decision me would bring decision making closer to the people and address a different interests of each English region as many consider England two large Talent Zone Parliament region assemblies would also create a more balanced Evolution assessment within the UK while some areas such as Cornwall and Yorkshire had a strong sense of reasonable identity and therefore it can be seen in a kind of regional Devolution in those areas would really work on the other hand it can be argued that it would break up England and fail to provide expression or a platform for English interests and identity whilst few areas have a strong sense of Freedom identity in the same way that kind of Cornwall or Yorkshire do there&#39;s also potential tensions between Regional assemblies or city regions and local government and then the final two things is that Urban interests would often dominate Regional assemblies and drown out rural interests whilst there&#39;s also little public support for a further Regional layer of government in England as shown by the 2004 referendum um on introducing a region assembly in the northeast of England um which received a 78 logo so yeah that&#39;s everything um for Devolution as I mentioned at the start of the video in terms of the kind of potential essay questions you could be asked the kind of first topic is on whether the impact of the division so whether it&#39;s been a success and the second one&#39;s on potential further reform establish so if you cover those two topics and have kind of Essie plans and ideas for how to answer those two questions you should be in pretty good stead as I mentioned at the start of the video the PDF you&#39;ve seen up here throughout the video um is in the first link in the description on the politics explained website where you can also find um lots of essay plans um and other resources that can help you on your a-level politics and also a place to sign up for tutoring with me if that&#39;s something you&#39;d be interested in so yeah um thanks for watching the video let me know in the comments if you&#39;ve got any questions and make sure to subscribe so you see any future videos um as I&#39;m going to keep releasing ones on content in the lead up to the exams this year thank you

hi my name&amp;#39;s Ollie and in this politics explained video I&amp;#39;m going to go through everything you need to know about Devolution in a level politics so that&amp;#39;s not just all the knowledge you need to know but also the key arguments and debates and essay questions you could be asked and the key arguments on either side of those debates giving you some real help with the analysis and the evaluation so in terms of the different sections of this video because it&amp;#39;s going to be a pretty long video I&amp;#39;m going to start by going through the kind of sections of the specification this covers and some past essay questions and like the key debates that is gonna it&amp;#39;s gonna address or that can come up in um in the possible exam then gonna quickly introduce why and when division was introduced from there I&amp;#39;m going to go through how power is devolved in each country so in Scotland Wales Northern Ireland and England with England obviously being um quite a bit different um from there I&amp;#39;m going to go into some kind of key debates on Devolution and some overall notes as well as well it&amp;#39;s giving you some really good examples for a policy difference and kind of increasing tension as well as covert is a really good recent example um and recent um bit of knowledge for how Devolution has changed um and then finally from there we&amp;#39;re going to look at some other debates over Devolution so that&amp;#39;s going to be a on the impact of devolution um on Thursday on Democracy then on the unity of the UK and also on economic and policy economics and policy impacts and then finally going to look at potential further reforms to Devolution so this is on the kind of debates about refer the reform part and that&amp;#39;s looking at should there be further Devolution to existing devolve body should there be an English Parliament should there be Regional assemblies that kind of thing and at the end we&amp;#39;re going to circle back um to some of the key essay questions and some Source questions that have come up just kind of recap um and recap what you need to know for the exam um so the PDF which you should be seeing up there and we&amp;#39;ll have all the notes um for this video you can find in the first link in the description to on the politics explained website where you can also find a link um to any tutoring if you&amp;#39;re interested as well as a lot of free and paid resources such as essay plans essays um and kind of other resources that are on there to help you with their politics available so yeah without further Ado let&amp;#39;s get into it so first off looking at the kind of parts of the specification this covers this is a pretty long video and a very long lesson because it really covers a lot of content so the key thing covers is Devolution right and that&amp;#39;s in the Constitution topic of the UK government of the first part of the UK government topic that&amp;#39;s Devolution to um all bodies in the UK so the devilish in England Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland um as well as kind of how there&amp;#39;s been further Devolution in in the last decade effectively and then finally the debates over whether the evolution should be extended further in England and also an including some debates about whether it should be excluding kind of whether it should be um Extended further in Scotland Wales and Northern mind as well I think that&amp;#39;s quite important to consider as well in terms of potential um essay questions and kind of key debates that can come up um the third there&amp;#39;s kind of two key types so the first one is going to be on the impact of devolution in the UK um so far and whether it&amp;#39;s been a success so you could have something such as um to what extent has the really should Devolution be seen as a success or a bit more complicated one um such as evaluate the view that diversion has been good for Wells in Scotland but not for England and Northern Ireland so that&amp;#39;s really looking at the success of devolution and the second one you&amp;#39;re gonna get is in relation to further reforms so that&amp;#39;s one such as evaluate the view that Devolution um reforms haven&amp;#39;t gone far enough and that could also be more specific just to England so evaluate the view that there should be further division reforms to England or evaluate the view there there should be an English Parliament so there&amp;#39;s two types of questions they&amp;#39;re the ones you&amp;#39;re going to be want to practicing and possibly making essay plans for there will be essay plans um before the final exam on the politics displaying website which you can purchase but also it can be useful um to make yourself so yeah they&amp;#39;re the kind of key questions you can get asked um and it&amp;#39;s also quite like this colorful Source question because it is a very difficult topic and one that a lot of students are probably going to go into the examine with not that much information it is maybe more likely to come up in a source question as well so starting off how when and why was Devolution introduced so how when was Diva introduced Devolution introduced so it&amp;#39;s in included in Labor&amp;#39;s 1997 election Manifesto um and after Labor&amp;#39;s kind of landslide victory in that election referends are held in each of the proposed evolved bodies um on whether those kind of devolved bodies the population of our bodies wanted Devolution and it was voted yes in Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland in Northern Ireland it was kind of part of the Good Friday agreement um which really brought an end to the violence of the troubles um but in that was kind of mechanisms for Devolution as well um and then parliament pass acts um which kind of set up the devolve bodies why was it introduced is a bit more complicated um it was partly to provide an expression for nationalism especially within Scotland which obviously um if you know about the Scottish independence referendum has a significant nationalist movement um to silence calls for Independence which are of course coming from Scotland at that time um and also just to satisfy the cause for greater autonomy and and democracy even if they were from some people who didn&amp;#39;t even want independence some people just wanted greater autonomy and greater local democracy in the UK and then it was also part of um new Labor&amp;#39;s wider constitutional reform program of modernizing and democratizing Britain um not and it wasn&amp;#39;t just in terms of kind of Science and calls for Independence and delivering more democracy it was also hoped that it would result in improved public services and economic conditions so now we&amp;#39;re going to go into um each country in detail kind of first with Scotland then um then I think Wales then Northern Ireland then England kind of looking at how divisions developed in them um the powers that they have now um and some other notes for each of them and potential further reforms so starting off with Scotland how has Devolution developed in Scotland um so the Scottish Parliament was created by the Scotland Act of 1998 which gave the devolved body significant legislative and tax varying powers and Scotland because of its kind of significant independence movement because of its um significant nationalism was given the most powers out of all of the evolved bodies and it still has the most powers out of all the devolved bodies so that included control over most public services or health education Justice and can be seen as service division but it&amp;#39;s a useful kind of phrase that you can use to describe it and so the way it&amp;#39;s set up is the parish reserve for Westminster were listed such as defense macroeconomic policy uh foreign policy constitutional matters and the less the rest of them were reserved for Scotland until 2007 labor was in power but from 2007 the SMP has been in power um either in minority in Coalition or once in majority government as well with Nicholas sturgeon was first Alex salmon is the first Minister um for the SNP but now Nicholas surgeon he&amp;#39;s become a very key figure in UK politics another key thing that happened in relation to Scotland um in race in the way that division developed was the 2014 Scottish independence referendum um so there&amp;#39;s an independence referendum so in Scotland in 2014 it led to a kind of surprisingly High support for independence of 45 and in the run-up to that to kind of satisfy or kind of um try and prevent them going for Independence Scotland was given more powers and it&amp;#39;s been given more power since um also to kind of reflect the cause for greater economy that can be seen in that Independence referendum result um and in particular the Scotland Act of 2016 which gave the Scottish Parliament further Powers particularly in the area of tax raising so they had the power to set all income tax rates and bans which interestingly they&amp;#39;ve recently used um as you&amp;#39;ll see in the notice later on and this can now be seen as fiscal Devolution so Scotland now has a lot of powers so looking at what powers well and now the Scottish Parliament now does have um it has power the most power of all the devolved bodies it controls key public services including health and social policy key welfare benefits um education environment policy law home Affairs Economic Development it also has significant fiscal Powers controlling income tax rates and bans and the right to 50 of all vat race in Scotland so now on like Holly rude raises about so Hollywood is a Scottish Parliament and raises about 60 of the money that is spent and so using that power the Scottish government recently increased the higher and top rates of income tax so that both rates are now two percent higher than the rest of the UK so that shows how they&amp;#39;re using their powers to create different policy um that reflects the views of their voters um in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK um and the Scottish Parliament also now has key Constitutional Powers so it controls its own composition and electoral system and since the Scottish at Scotland Act of 2016 it can only be abolished with a referendum making it a permanent part of the UK Constitution the 2016 Scotland act also enshrined the Sewell convention into law meaning that Westminster has to ask Hollywood every time before legislating on a devolved matter such as health or education and so it needs the consent um of the Scottish Parliament final thing I&amp;#39;ve included just for Scotland is something that happened very recently in November 2022. so there was a really important Supreme Court ruling in 2022 um in relation to another Scottish independence referendum so it wasn&amp;#39;t really clear who could legislate for an independence referendum in Scotland um as parliamentary sovereignties that&amp;#39;s the UK Parliament is important but often disputing relating to Scotland especially kind of in competition with popular sovereignty in Scotland so what the other people want in Scotland which obviously Nicholas sturgeon the s p were kind of really championing um the first Independence referendum was agreed um or legislated by a special agreement between the Scottish government and the UK government and then passed by both parliaments to kind of um give it legitimacy um that hasn&amp;#39;t been there hasn&amp;#39;t been agreement like that for the for a second my friend and the second Independence referendum with the UK government kind of saying no to one um the Scottish government however tried to suggest that they could just hold one themselves um despite that and sought to argue they could legislate for a referendum themselves under the powers of the Scotland act what happened in November 2022 is that the UK Supreme Court ruled that the Scotland act um doesn&amp;#39;t give the Scottish Parliament the power to unilaterally legislate for an independence referendum instead it&amp;#39;s still a reserve power of the UK Parliament and therefore the consent of the UK Parliament is necessary so Scotland Khan Scottish government and Parliament can&amp;#39;t legislate for a referendum on his own so it kind of not only showed the power of the UK Supreme Court to clarify the powers of different evolved bodies um but also the continued validity of the part of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and the fact that the kind of extent of constitutional control in Scotland shouldn&amp;#39;t be overstated in terms of potential future reforms of devolution in Scotland there really aren&amp;#39;t that many because it&amp;#39;s got so many Powers already so it could be taken to Devo Max um so that&amp;#39;s the kind of Maximum Devolution that it could be taken to before you before you move to Independence so the maximum amount of powers um and interestingly a lot of polls suggests that if there was a second Independence referendum that Scottish people would vote to leave um to leave the UK so it really is an interesting point in Scottish and UK politics um where there are really high courts of nationalism the breakup of the UK could be could definitely happen in the next next few decades not only from Scotland but also from Northern Ireland to interested me um but obviously the more powers that devolved to Scotland the more pertinent the West Lothian question becomes we&amp;#39;re going to go through that one later in the video um and also the kind of Greater differences there are between Scotland and the rest of the UK which can be problematic um in terms of democracy okay so now moving on to Wales so Wales started with far fewer Powers than Scotland or Northern Ireland as there was very little National sentiment in Wales and the 1997 referendum on Welsh Devolution was very close so there was a majority of just kind of 0.5 so 50.5 on just a 50 turnout so pretty much only 25 support within the country for it um if you take into account the turnout um at first Wales was therefore only given um the Welsh assembly and had no legislative powers or first minister so it&amp;#39;s only granted administrative devolution over the years however Wales has gained a lot more powers in response to Growing nationalism and public support for Devolution and that&amp;#39;s particularly after the 2011 wealth Devolution referendum which saw a 64 vote for primary educative powers and the 2017 Wales act which gave Wales further powers and renamed the Welsh assembly the Welsh Parliament since 1997 labor have always been in power um in Wales either on their own or in Coalition Mark Drakeford is the current first Minister um you might know him from kind of gaining particular importance during covert as well as diverged in some policies from the rest of the UK so which powers does Wales now have especially since the 2017 Wales act the world&amp;#39;s Parliament has gained a lot more Powers though it still has fewer Powers than the Scottish Parliament and the northern Irish Parliament as with Scotland and Northern Ireland the powers reserve for Westminster are now set out with the Scottish Parliament able to legislate on the rest um on the rest sorry that should say the Welsh Parliament with the Welsh Parliament able to legislate on the rest so it can be seen as service Devolution in the way that Scotland originally had the Welsh assembly Now controls Health and Social Services education the environment housing Economic Development and its own composition and elections among other things and in terms of kind of fiscal Powers it collects 10 of Wales income tax and can vary the bans and rates for this 10 percent it still doesn&amp;#39;t control Law and Order though which contrasts um with Scotland including policing and legal jurisdiction um like the Scottish Parliament does as I said and that&amp;#39;s because the UK government blocked in and effectively said no Welsh Independence is growing in popularity with some poles over 30 um support and that may lead to Greater Devolution in Wales with calls for Wales to have the same Powers as Scotland currently has um this also may have been influenced by the covert period in which you saw kind of whales diverging from England and the rest of the UK significantly and kind of demonstrating that it could do so effectively and successfully especially at points doing so more successfully than England so now moving on to Northern Ireland evolution in Northern Ireland has developed pretty differently in large part due to the specific context of Northern Ireland and the history of the troubles in Northern Ireland so it was introduced in 1998 as part of a broader peace process between Catholics and Protestants um between nationalists and unionists following the 1998 Good Friday agreement and power sharing was really key to this process so power sharing between the two communities so the executive must be led by a first Minister and Deputy first Minister um which have to be from different communities um and several key decisions including the budget and program for government require Cross Community Support so kind of can&amp;#39;t function without that cross community support and because of that it often kind of hasn&amp;#39;t functioned very well so government installment is very fragile with frequent suspensions in which the parties refuse to work together in government during these suspensions government functions um other site are kind of decided directly by the government in westminster&amp;#39;s offendedly direct rule um during which some during some significant changes have been made including the legalization of same-sex marriage the Norris Northern Irish government has been suspended since February 22 so it&amp;#39;s currently suspended for the first time in May 2022 sin fame became the largest party but the dup refused to nominate a speaker and former government um with the leader of the um Michelle O&amp;#39;Neill as first minute so that&amp;#39;s kind of why it&amp;#39;s being shot down because you need power sharing if that power sharing isn&amp;#39;t agreed to a certain time you don&amp;#39;t have a government so what powers does Northern Ireland now have um in 1998 Northern Ireland was given as Scotland was primary legislative control over areas not reserved for Westminster so in the same way that Wales has now apart from corporation tax and policing and Justice being devolved the north northern Irish assembly hasn&amp;#39;t really gained um many more Powers since and it still lacks major tax raising Powers so like Wales it now has service to Evolution and controls Health and Social Services and kind of a lot of the similar areas of policy um previously mentioned for Scotland and Wales um and I can also legislate on some Reserve matters with the support of the Northern Ireland secretary so Northern Ireland secretary is in the UK government in terms of potential few potential future reforms it&amp;#39;s kind of unlikely because unionists are very opposed to um to further Devolution um a referendum on reunification with the Republic of Ireland is possible though especially as it&amp;#39;s now estimated that Catholics outnumber Protestants um in Northern Ireland so finally moving on to England which is which is quite different to the other three so how&amp;#39;s the evolution developed in England other kind of well there actually you should um see um one of the local males Mayors in England that&amp;#39;s Andy Burnham who&amp;#39;s kind of gained quite a lot of publicity and popularity during covert um unlike the other 12 bodies England doesn&amp;#39;t have a parliament and evolution is England in England is defined by variation in inconsistency so certain powers would devolve to the greater London Authority in 1998 but in the rest of England there&amp;#39;s a kind of real Patchwork of the great of arrangements with many areas having no Devolution and some areas having more than others new labor proposed Regional assemblies in the early 2000s which were pretty big areas um supposed to be pretty big areas of division within England so for example the Northeast um the Southwest that kind of thing um but it was dropped after 2004 referendum on a region assembly in the north east of England received a 78 Novo so a pretty conclusive rejection by the electorate um following that the Coalition and then the conservative government under Cameron um sought to promote the northern Powerhouse which is a key phrase of George Osborne um the chancellor in the Coalition promoting transport links in Greater investment and kind of as part of that they introduced city regions with Metro Mayors including in Manchester Sheffield and Liverpool um with as I said neighbors Andy Burnham being the most high profile only seven city regions have been created um while some have actually been kind of shot down with Hartlepool and Stoke scrapping them and returning to traditional local government so which powers does England know how I&amp;#39;m going to split this into um looking at first London and then Sid the other city regions so that&amp;#39;s a picture of city car not there I&amp;#39;m the current London mayor and London has the most of all powers in England controlled by a directly elected mayor and an elected London assembly so London Mayors are important political figures um so citycon&amp;#39;s a current one before when you had Boris Johnson who obviously then became the Prime Minister and Ken Livingston the great London Authority has strategic responsibility and power over policing transport and economic development so of course not as much as I have Scotland Wales or Northern Ireland but considering that um London has a massive population and is economically extremely important that is still very important devolution um and it&amp;#39;s been able to kind of introduce some reforms because of that for example Kevin Livingston introduced the congestion charge and free travel for young people um which had like very big impacts on people&amp;#39;s lives in London um city regions are modeled in ways in many ways on London and intended to boost Regional economies so each City region has a kind of bespoke arrangement um and part and kind of negotiates those powers on a bespoke basis so greater Manchester kind of probably has the most out of any of the um other city regions and it&amp;#39;s kind of blazed uh a trail in gaining substantial control over Health um they&amp;#39;re the focus of most deals in city regions on transport infrastructure and other areas linked to generating economic growth such as education business business retention skills that kind of thing um interest needed the evolution of some healthcare policy to Greater Manchester has been linked to a modest increases in life expectancy so you see kind of some evidence of success which I&amp;#39;m going to look through in a lot more detail um just in in a moment in the video um the city region deals are less substantial the evolution as to Scotland or Wales um and they&amp;#39;re only administered Devolution um so control over implementation rather than legislative division they don&amp;#39;t have their own parliaments so the final thing to look at is the West Lothian question and English votes for English laws which is another kind of um or was another type of division in England so power being devolved to Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland raise the West Lothian question and that was kind of the question like it was questioned why Scottish MPS should be able to vote on English matters in the UK Parliament that don&amp;#39;t affect their constituents for example on Healthcare in England um whilst English MPS can&amp;#39;t do the same in the Scottish Parliament and in order to tackle that ever was introduced in 2015 and that allowed English MPS to veto any legislation just affecting England from being passed it didn&amp;#39;t allow them to kind of make their own laws just for England but they did get a veto on anything just affect the England it wasn&amp;#39;t used that often so only in one third of bills in the 2015-2017 parliament um it may have become more significant if a government was elected with a majority in the UK but not in England because that kind of England veto would have become a lot more important and used a lot more especially kind of in a very um in a very kind of political way um but it was criticized for creating two tiers of MPS adding unnecessary complications and not providing a viable expression for English Identity or kind of nationalism and was scrapped by Boris Johnson&amp;#39;s government in July 2021 but still on the syllabus and you can definitely still introduce it um because it is a quite important area or a potential reform future form if it could be reintroduced and it&amp;#39;s quite an important area where Devolution was introduced okay so I&amp;#39;m now going to go into some overall notes on Devolution that you need to know so rather than being specific to each country um so that&amp;#39;s starting off with the Barnet formula so this is pretty important and the Barnet formula is the system used to determine the amount of funding given to each divorce body so to Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland was originally drawn up as a short-term mechanism in 1979 and doesn&amp;#39;t take into account relative need so for example Wales receives less money than Scotland despite being poorer kind of less per head of the population with England effectively subsidizing the other three nations which hits the prime areas of England the hardest so obviously England kind of he&amp;#39;s also slightly warped with fact that London is the Richer part of the UK but there&amp;#39;s some very deprived areas in England as well um and they&amp;#39;re really kind of hit quite hard by this because in the block grants um they&amp;#39;re given to Scotland Wales Northern Ireland um that they get more per head of the population than England does especially so for example in um 2021 public spending per person in the UK as a whole was thirteen thousand four hundred and fourteen pounds per person and in England it was two percent below that UK average in Scotland it was 11 above in Wales at six percent um above another blind it was 14 Above So neither labor nor the conservatives are sought to replace it despite it kind of being quite an arbitrary mechanism um fearing political repercussions from voting Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland and in the Scottish independence referendum all three parties in Westminster pledged their support to continue it on the other hand Nigel farage criticized it and argued it should be scrapped when he was leader of ukip as he saw it being unfair to the population of England in terms of attitudes to Devolution there was kind of a kind of just kind of wave to in terms of support for Devolution up until Boris Johnson so since Tony Bett introduced the evolution in 1997 all UK prime ministers have been supportive of it with further Devolution to Scotland Wales Northern Ireland on the under the coalition government and conservative governments of Cameron and May Evolution continued to be seen as positive in terms of democracy um and really key in keeping the union together um in the face of growing nationalism especially in Scotland with the 2014 Independence referendum Boris Johnson kind of really differed from this um describing Devolution as a disaster and Tony Blair&amp;#39;s biggest mistake in November 2020 and failing to work closely with devolved bodies when in power with very frequent clashes with Scotland and Wales in particular over covert policies and constant criticism of Nicholas sturgeon in particular this trust seemed to continue Boris Johnson&amp;#39;s approach once she wasn&amp;#39;t in power for that long so she really couldn&amp;#39;t do much but Rishi sunak has sought to pull back from like it somewhat since becoming um prime minister supporting a more Cooperative approach that&amp;#39;s also difficult to see where he&amp;#39;s going to go because he hasn&amp;#39;t been in power for that long um covid-19 was really kind of important for devotion the development of devolution in the early months of the of the covert pandemic policy was very similar across all parts of the United Kingdom with the Prime Minister and first Ministers of each devolved country um all participating in joint meetings up until early June as time went on however policy really began to diverge and there were tensions between the leaders of different parts of the UK England and Northern Ireland for example lifted restrictions after the first lockdown quicker than Wales in Scotland um opening for example non-essential retail as well as pubs and restaurants and other differences followed especially in relation to education at different points in the pandemic different parts of the United Kingdom also had different levels of success in managing the spread of the virus so covid was really kind of a kind of almost a scientist experiment where you really saw the differences in Devolution there was real scope for different um for differences in policy in a way that people really felt in their lives the division was having a big impact um so especially due to the nature of cover being able to spread between populations of each devolved body this led to increased tensions and criticisms so Nicholas dungeon for example criticized Boris Johnson for using the covert crisis as a political weapon and repeating restrictions too quickly Mark Drakeford first minister in Wales accused Boris Johnson of disrespecting the people of Wales um and called the PM really really awful for neglecting the Welsh population in the way he formulated and announced covert policies and there was also criticism within England so Andy Burnham uh Metro mayor in Greater Manchester very publicly criticized the UK government in October 2020 failing to provide sufficient financial support to businesses forced to shut down by government policies in the second lockdown so he was there representing businesses in Greater Manchester and covert also led to devolved bodies becoming um the leaders of devolved body becoming a household names and gaining notoriety due to public announcements and poly decisions that had a tangible tangible impact on people&amp;#39;s lives so diversion itself became far more visible and high profile so what I&amp;#39;ve got now is um two useful examples of policy difference two pretty detailed examples so the first one is higher education as education is an area of policy controlled by all the evolved bodies higher education is a really useful example to show this policy difference this is particularly um as the conservative party has been power in England so a right-wing brexit supporting government um whilst in in the other 12 bodies there&amp;#39;s been more left-wing um governments especially in Scotland and Wales so in England the coalition government increased tuition fees up to 9 250 pounds per year for home students and scrapped most grants so um yeah so 9 250 pounds per year if you&amp;#39;re an English student going to University um that&amp;#39;s what you have to pay go to university in England in Scotland tuition fees for homeschooling home students were scrapped in part by the um neighbor lib Dem coalition government in 2001 and then completely by the s p in 2008 so if you&amp;#39;re a Scottish government that&amp;#39;s got a student sorry going to Scottish University you don&amp;#39;t pay any tuition fees that&amp;#39;s a really big difference in policy and really big impact um difference in impact on on people&amp;#39;s lives which I&amp;#39;m sure a lot of you watching this video um will kind of feel in in a couple of years in Wales tuition fees for home students are capped at 9 000 pounds per year and there&amp;#39;s a thousand pound Grant to help with living costs for all students so similar to the to England but a bit more help um a bit more kind of support especially in terms of Grants those grants were largely scrapped by England um have been scared by England in Northern Ireland by contrast tuition fees are capped at 4 630 pounds per year um for home shoot so pretty much you&amp;#39;re paying half if you&amp;#39;re from Northern Ireland it can go into a northern Irish University so that really shows um differences in policy and how Devolution does have a bigger big impact on people&amp;#39;s lives Health isn&amp;#39;t also a really useful example of policy difference in terms of health policy you can pick a number of things to look at um but I kind of decided to look at kind of prescription charges there&amp;#39;s prescription charges in in England but not in the other devolved bodies um in terms of um financial support for the cost of um the elderly there&amp;#39;s a lot more in Scotland Wells and Northern Ireland than there is in in England um and greater Manchester is also already a useful example for this so in 2015 the greater Manchester City region um was given devolved control over the health budget um which should be seen as administrative Devolution with the implementation um devolved rather than any um let&amp;#39;s do powers so much of the house policy is similar to the rest of England but there have also been changes for example they have a more joined up approach to care and greater funding for mental health care relative to other Healthcare funding so that&amp;#39;s kind of a real example where you do see that policy difference and different impacts on people&amp;#39;s lives um because of devolution okay so now moving on to debates over the evolution and this is really where we&amp;#39;re going to be getting into the analysis part of your essays so real key arguments you can make in relation to Devolution in time in terms of answering the essay questions that you can be asked so proof like so far we&amp;#39;ve been looking at knowledge now really going into analysis so in terms of debates over Devolution first looking at the impact of devolution on Democracy then the impact of devolution on the unity of the UK and then the impact of devolution on in terms of Economic and policy impacts and these are three kind of headings that you could use in an essay so for example you said you had an essay evaluate the argument that derision is being a success you do the first paragraph on Democracy second paragraph on Unity of the UK third paragraph on economic and policy impacts with for and against arguments in each and a evaluation in each then at the end in your conclusion come into an overall judgment in relation to the question which obviously you should have in your introduction as well um so starting with the impact of devolution on Democracy so the arguments that Evolution has had a positive impact to democracy is that Devolution is allowed for more effective representation with devolved bodies being able to respond to the concerns of their electorates so that can be seen in the differences in policy in the areas of covert education Healthcare that um just went through the more proportional electoral systems um in Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland that&amp;#39;s AMS and STV have led to a more representative mix of parties as well and the UK Parliament still theoretically has the power to remove the powers of the devolved bodies and is therefore still theoretically Sovereign so UK parliamentary sovereignty can be seen as a kind of key part of democracy in the UK and it still can be said to be sovereign on the other hand some argue that parliamentary sovereignty has actually been undone and undermined by Devolution by moving decision-making power away from the UK Parliament which is elected by the whole of the UK further turnout and devolved assembly elections is generally low um so 63.5 in the 2021 Scott elections around the same in the 2022 nor marriage assembly elections but just 46.6 in the 2021 Senate so that&amp;#39;s the Welsh Parliament elections so it can be argued also that the evolution undermines equal citizenship um in the UK as divergences in policy mean that different citizens have different access to healthcare education Etc and are subject to different laws fiscal Devolution can also be argued to undermine redistribution of resources from richer to poorer areas whilst the Barnet formula can be seen as unfair and undemocratic so they&amp;#39;re the arguments on either side in terms of democracy and as I said at the start of video you can download um the PDF that you should be seeing up there on the politics explained website to kind of look those through those in a bit more detail in terms of the impact of devolution on the unity of the UK the arguments that Devolution has had a positive impact on the unity of the UK is that no nationalist movement has yet achieved Independence and it can be argued that Devolution has satisfied some demands for self-government and therefore help to avoid the breakup of the UK Devolution has also led to a relatively stable peace in Northern Ireland providing the framework for building long-term change away from um what came before in terms of the the conflict the troubles and recent increase in support for Independence can partly be attributed to the unpopularity the conservative government in the UK rather than due to the evolution itself in terms of arguments that division has had a negative impact on the unity of the UK the asymmetric nature of the evolution so different powers for different parts of the UK um can be seen as undermining the unity of the UK as different citizens have different levels of representation and are subject to different laws and different policies it can also be argued that Devolution has fueled increased nationalism and calls for independence by showing the ability of Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland to govern themselves and giving nationalist parties and politicians a platform so the s p has been empowering in Scotland since 2007 and almost achieved Independence in 2014 since then um support among the Scottish population for Independence has increased with polls now suggesting there is a majority support for Independence you also see support for Welsh Independence growing um and in Northern Ireland the more radical Sinn feiners became the largest party in the Nationalist block um and was the largest party following the 2022 Northern Irish assembly elections um and especially more recently uh relations between devolved bodies and leaders and the UK government have been very strained and fragmented with tensions and a lack of cooperation so that can be really seen as undermining the unity of the UK and that was especially seen during covert finally looking at the economic and policy impacts of devolution so on the one hand the arguments that the evolution has had a positive economic and policy impact firstly the scope for experimentation means that some policies such as the ban on smoking in public spaces um have been tried in Scotland and other devolved bodies and then adopted across the whole of the UK so it can have those kind of positive um policy impacts in terms of experimentation Devolution has also allowed for policy that reflects the interests of local populations and can be seen as commuting in the policy Divergence is over covert Healthcare and education so for example as I said the Scottish government recently increased the higher and top rates of income tax so that both rates are now two percent higher than the rest of the UK in some areas more effective policy making can also be seen as the result of devolution for example in Greater Manchester greater control over Health has correlated with modest increases in life expectancy in some cases on the other hand arguments that divisions has a negative impact in terms of economics and policy there hasn&amp;#39;t really been that much Devolution dividend in terms of Economic and policy improvements with devolved bodies even falling behind in some areas and generally just being similar to England um it&amp;#39;s got his education for example has been drastically Changed by the s p but Scotland has since fallen behind England in the Pisa rankings so the program for international student assessment which kind of measures the success of different um different education systems in the world it can be argued that Evolution undermines equal citizenship as I kind of mentioned also in the Democracy um part as Divergence and policy mean that different systems of different access to different Healthcare education Etc and are subject to different laws that can be seen is a real negative in terms of economics and policy and some argue that evolve bodies particularly the SMP Focus too much on Independence rather than day-to-day policy making okay the final thing I&amp;#39;m going to touch on in this video is potential further reforms the Devolution so that&amp;#39;s both to existing devolved bodies and the potential creation of dual bodies particularly in England so in terms of arguments about further Devolution to existing divorce bodies arguments forefather Devolution to existing evolved bodies include devolved bodies have shown that they can run Public Service systems of decide policy effectively especially during the Kobe crisis brexit allows a lot of policy areas that used to be gotten by the UK by the EU sorry to be given to the world bodies including in already developed areas such as Agriculture and energy though Wales is smaller than Scotland and more closely integrated with England there&amp;#39;s no reason why Cardiff shouldn&amp;#39;t be given many of the powers that Hollywood in Scotland already enjoys there&amp;#39;s also significant scope for more fiscal Devolution and particularly to Wales Northern Ireland and city regions in England further division or further division able to discourage Scotland from voting for Independence in terms of arguments against um further Devolution to existing the world bodies further Evolution especially in terms of tax raising powers wrestling into greater disparities in the public services offered to different UK citizens and therefore further undermines UK or risks further undermining equal citizenship whilst also reducing burden sharing between richer and poorer regions in the UK further um another point is to devolve bodies already hold significant amounts of power and there&amp;#39;s not really much public support for that increasing um whilst now you can also argue that default bodies haven&amp;#39;t really proved that they can really the the benefits of devolution are that high in terms of kind of Economic and political benefits and finally many areas of Regulation such as food and safety standards and environmental targets arguably better protect people if they&amp;#39;re nationally um if they&amp;#39;re National policies and also limit the burden on businesses in terms of further Devolution to England I&amp;#39;m going to first look at some overall arguments I then look at kind of specific possible policies so um in terms of overall Arguments for further Devolution to England the evolution is currently asymmetric with England underrepresented within the context of the whole of the UK and this is especially important as it holds the majority of the UK&amp;#39;s population further lead the evolution to England could help solve the what&amp;#39;s loathing question and give an outlet for nationalism within England and therefore present it being used and manifested in divisive ways such as it&amp;#39;s been argued that happened during the 2016 brexit referendum in terms of arguments against further Devolution to England it can be argued that none of the proposed methods for representing England are practical um another ones we&amp;#39;re going to look at in a moment um there&amp;#39;s also little public appetite for further Devolution to England and other measures to be taken to better represent the English population instead of further deviations they can include kind of um reintroducing and adapting English very English laws and scrapping the Barnet formula for example in terms of um for the reforms to England one of the key ones suggested ones is an English poem so items foreign English parliament are that they would complete the illusion with the UK making it symmetrical and granting the English population the same level of representation that the rest of the UK has it would also create a more coherent system of devolution with the federal UK Parliament responsible for uk-wide issues and then each part of the UK having its own um having its own Parliament to control issues that only pertain to that specific country um it would also give English identity and interests effective political and institutional expression and could be combined with the codification of the Constitution to establish clear relations between the UK government and the government of the formation on the other hand in terms of arguments against an English Parliament an English poem would only serve to create another layer of government and would create tensions between the English Parliament and um English Parliament English government and between them and the uk-wide government with the former challenging the latter it wouldn&amp;#39;t credit coherental equal system as England is much bigger than Scotland um Wales on Northern Ireland and holds 85 percent of the UK&amp;#39;s population further federalism arguably worked best when there is no dominant state or region there&amp;#39;s also no real support for an English pilot within England um and arguments between London and other component Nations over funding and policies really wouldn&amp;#39;t go away um also it can be argued that some of those proposing a federal Britain and English Parliament perhaps just using it um using the issue to secure a codified Constitution which is what they really want rather than seeing it as a desirable goal in itself a final proposed reform to Devolution in England is further Regional Devolution nuclear so that&amp;#39;s in terms of city regions and Regional assemblies rather than kind of Devotion to the whole of England so on the one hand it can be argued that more city regions or Regional assemblies would bring decision me would bring decision making closer to the people and address a different interests of each English region as many consider England two large Talent Zone Parliament region assemblies would also create a more balanced Evolution assessment within the UK while some areas such as Cornwall and Yorkshire had a strong sense of reasonable identity and therefore it can be seen in a kind of regional Devolution in those areas would really work on the other hand it can be argued that it would break up England and fail to provide expression or a platform for English interests and identity whilst few areas have a strong sense of Freedom identity in the same way that kind of Cornwall or Yorkshire do there&amp;#39;s also potential tensions between Regional assemblies or city regions and local government and then the final two things is that Urban interests would often dominate Regional assemblies and drown out rural interests whilst there&amp;#39;s also little public support for a further Regional layer of government in England as shown by the 2004 referendum um on introducing a region assembly in the northeast of England um which received a 78 logo so yeah that&amp;#39;s everything um for Devolution as I mentioned at the start of the video in terms of the kind of potential essay questions you could be asked the kind of first topic is on whether the impact of the division so whether it&amp;#39;s been a success and the second one&amp;#39;s on potential further reform establish so if you cover those two topics and have kind of Essie plans and ideas for how to answer those two questions you should be in pretty good stead as I mentioned at the start of the video the PDF you&amp;#39;ve seen up here throughout the video um is in the first link in the description on the politics explained website where you can also find um lots of essay plans um and other resources that can help you on your a-level politics and also a place to sign up for tutoring with me if that&amp;#39;s something you&amp;#39;d be interested in so yeah um thanks for watching the video let me know in the comments if you&amp;#39;ve got any questions and make sure to subscribe so you see any future videos um as I&amp;#39;m going to keep releasing ones on content in the lead up to the exams this year thank you

Transcript for:Devolution in A-Level Politics

Transcript for:
Devolution in A-Level Politics