Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mrs Haynes and welcome to my lesson today on citizenship.

So, my lesson today is the fourth one in the series that I've been doing, looking at the economy.

And today's lesson is understanding the debate around the privatisation of public services.

And my key question today is should all public services be privatised? So I thought probably the best place to start off here would be to just make sure that we understand what a public service is.

So I've got some pictures there that might help you with your understanding and I'm just going to read out the writing in green.

What is a public service? A service that is available to everyone when needed.

Examples include: health and social care, education, emergency services, the justice system, the police and the armed services, okay.

Now the UK is what's known as a combined economy.

That means it has public services currently owned by government or private companies, so it has both.

Now it might be a good idea if you noted any of that down if that's all new to you.

So just pause for a moment if necessary.

Okay so in this lesson today, we're going to look at different views people have on whether public services should be owned by government or by private companies; or whether, in fact, our combined economic model should continue.

So we're going to start with this bit.

Why do some people want public services to be owned by government? We're going to see three views which support government ownership.

The next slide I bring up is going to have a video clip in it.

I want you to listen very carefully.

She's going to give us three reasons why she supports government ownership.

So here are three reasons why public services should be publicly owned.

Reason number one, public services are vital for our society.

Our schools and hospitals, our water and energy, our trains and buses, our care work and council services.

These are not consumer products and they're not optional extras.

They're vital services that we all need, that we all use, that we all pay for.

And most of us believe they should be run for people rather than profit.

Reason number two, public services tend to be natural monopolies.

So that means they're more efficient if they're run in an integrated way rather than trying to introduce artificial competition where it doesn't belong.

So you don't get to choose which train you travel on when you're at the station or where your water comes from because these things are natural monopolies.

Reason number three, public services need to be democratically accountable.

Because we don't have a say over them as consumers, we need a democratic say over the services that we need and the kind of society that we want to build.

We need a say over our energy future, how our schools are run, what happens in our NHS.

Okay, well that's Cat Hobbs and she heads up a pressure group called We Own It.

And she was quite clear there, giving us three reasons why she felt that public services should be owned by government.

So just pause for a moment now and make a note of anything that you heard there.

Just to let you know that after the three views, I will give a summary of the views that were given.

So if you're not sure what was said, we will come back to that later on in our lesson today.

Okay so the next thing we're going to see is a gentleman called Professor David Hall and he's from the public services research unit and he's talking in 2011 to the New Zealand Political Studies Association and he gives another reason why public services should be owned by government.

Listen here.

Innovation, now innovation's another thing.

If you say, okay, you know, private sectors always out there inventing new things to make money 'cause they're driven by this great sort of creative money making urge and surely, okay, they must be more innovative.

But then, you know, if you look at, the sort of, big, life-changing invention, big inventions that literally, sort of, changed the world and start listing them out, you think, hang on a minute, where did that.

You look at things like computers.

Computers were invented in the public sector.

The internet, the internet wasn't invented by Microsoft.

In fact, Microsoft thought it was just a kid's game to start with.

They really didn't understand it.

The internet was invented in the public sector.

And through universities and through hence, establishments, leading to establishment internet, it was public sector.

So we have computers invented in the public sector.

We have the internet invented in this public sector.

We invented space travel in the public sector and all the things that spin off from that, including non-stick saucepans, thanks to public sector and innovation.

Penicillin, probably the biggest single, sort of, medical advance of the 20th century, invented in public sector research laboratory.

So it's not when you look at, kind of, big, big stuff.

It's not even true that the public sector isn't innovative.

It really generates as much new ground-breaking contributions as anybody in the private sector.

Okay, so hopefully you will have heard there that David did tell us about something else that he suggests as being an advantage of government ownership.

So on the screen now, you can see four possible things that he may have suggested.

I want you just to pause for a moment and see which of these ones you think is correct.

So there's one correct and three wrong.

The options are more possibility for innovation, more possibility for cooking, more usage of the internet or more need for antibiotics.

So just think for a minute, which one of those was it? Okay now I'm going to give the answer.

Yes, it was that one, I knew you got that one.

More possibility for innovation.

Yes, David suggests that innovation, the creation of new inventions, has often happened in government-owned services.

Okay the last of our three viewpoints now for government ownership.

So this is Professor Andrew Cumbers who is actually the professor of political regional economics at the Adam Smith Business School in Glascow.

And he wrote a book called 'Reclaiming Public Ownership' and this is one of his beliefs.

He says, 'If we have critical public services that everybody needs and requires, surely the public should own them'.

Okay and he wrote that and he said that in 2019.

Right, so now we've had three views.

Here's just a summary.

By all means, pause on this slide if you'd like to to make a note of these.

These are suggested positive effects of government ownership, covered in the previous slides.

Firstly, vital services will be run by, sorry, for people, not for profit.

Services would be more efficient ran in an integrated way.

Services would be democratically accountable and would be owned by those that use them.

And there would be more innovation.

So if you didn't get any of those, perhaps just pause the video here again and make a note of any of those.

Right, now, why do some people want public services to be owned by private business? So this is the other side now.

We're going to, again, see three views that support private ownership.

Right, so this is a piece of writing written by a gentleman called Chris Edwards and he's writing for CAPX in 2017.

CAPX, by the way, is an online news website founded by the center-right think tank called the Centre for Policy Studies.

So this is what he says, 'The revolution was launched by Margaret Thatcher.

But it was the privatisation that became her most important and enduring economic legacy.

Thatcher popularised the word privatisation, and she oversaw the sale of many businesses, including British Airways, British Telecom, British Steel, and British Gas.

Privatisation has had a huge effect on the global economy.

It has spurred economic growth and improved living standards as private businesses cut costs, increased service quality, and innovated.

' So just to help you there, I've put an image there of Margaret Thatcher.

If you can hear noise in the background, that's thunder.

It's about to rain.

So we've got an image there of Margaret Thatcher and she was our UK conservative prime minister for quite a long time actually, 1979 to 1990.

First female prime minister, okay.

Now different viewpoint, with another gentleman, also supporting public services being owned by private businesses.

This is Jeremy Warner.

He wrote in an article called, 'Why privatisation has been a success story', and he wrote this for the independent newspaper.

Privatisation was never a popular policy; many saw it as little more than Margaret Thatcher's gift to the English middle-classes.

Yet, British Telecom is now seen as a triumph of privatisation.

Today we have better quality of service, more choice and lower prices in Britain than almost anywhere else in the world apart from the United States.

BT is also at the forefront of international developments in telecoms. So perhaps just pause there again and make a note of the additional point that's being made there by Jeremy Warner.

I've also put it in bold to help you.

Okay, now the next thing we're going to see on the next slide is actually a clip from some industries in Vietnam.

Just to add some difference to this.

I just wanted to show you, sort of, the international perspective of where some industries that were owned by the government have then become private businesses and it shows some of the successes that they've had since then.

Okay, here we go.

Vinamilk, which produces a range of dairy product, is a good example of a state-owned enterprise with good governance.

When it was privatised, the company attracted strategic investor interest and expanded internationally in a competitive way.

Today, Vinamilk has more than 15,000 employees and is distributed in about 250,000 locations countrywide.

The company has operations in 43 countries, surpassing $2 billion revenues in 2016.

Also initially established as a state-run company in the late 1980s, FPT rapidly established a strong presence in IT and telecom services.

We provide system integration services, software services, telecom services.

Our overseas revenues grow very fast.

Today, FPT is present in 21 counties around the world and employs about 30,000 people.

So some suggested positive effects of privatisation, covered in the three previous slides.

There would be more economic growth.

Costs would be cut and service quality increased.

There would be more international development and growth.

There would be more innovation.

Okay, so those are some of the things that we heard that were coming out from those last three slides.

So, again, pause for a moment if you not sure that you got any of those already in your notes.

So once you finish that, you should then have, sort of, two good lists of each side of the argument for government ownership or for private business ownership.

And it's just started to rain really heavily so you might hear the rain now.

Okay, one thing I just thought I'd mention here is, I wonder if you spotted that the final point on both of your lists that you've written down there now actually says that innovation was something there would be more of from both sides, from government owned and also from private business owned, okay.

Now I just us to be aware that this indicates that this is not a clear cut debate.

And that perhaps, rather than viewing this as either side, privatisation or government ownership, as being completely right or wrong, that maybe we are better to look at this and try and seek some kind of compromise, to look at where there might be common ground as sort of the positive way forward, some agreement on what's best with that particular service.

And if we think about that, we can then see how our mixed economy has developed and perhaps they make sense in some regard.

I'm just going to show you a little clip now about the NHS 'cause that's currently something that is owned by government but there's lots of discussion about whether that should be more privatised.

So just have a listen to this for a moment.

All these breakthroughs in technology that will, of course, cost money.

So the overriding question is, will the NHS remain free at the point of delivery? What we see whenever you go out and ask members of the public is that actually people do understand across all age groups, across all sections of society, how important that protection that the NHS provided is to them.

And support for the principles of a tax funded, free at the point of use NHS are rock solid in every part of the country, in every generation across every political party when you poll people.

Okay, so you can see that actually despite, kind of, maybe a push towards privatisation in some, sort of, political areas, there is some support, still, for certain services remaining.

Okay, so you can see that actually despite, kind of, maybe a push towards privatisation in some, sort of, political areas, there is some support, still, for certain services remaining under government ownership.

Right, let's just consolidate and perhaps further our understanding and learning by a quick, kind of, sorting activity now.

So in a moment, I'm going to ask you to pause your video to complete this task.

I'd like you to list which of the following suggestions are positives or negatives of government owning services, okay.

It should take you about eight or so minutes to do this and when you finished it, again, you'll have two new lists.

I believe that I've put five positives and four negatives on the next slide that you're going to see and I'd like you to identify which is which.

Okay so this is the slide.

Possible positives or negatives of government ownership, within our current political system in the UK.

Okay so I'm going to ask you to pause now and identify which is which.

Which is the positives and which are the negatives.

So I suggest them out under the different headings.

Okay let's carry on now then.

So I'm going to show you the answers.

So all the positives, have all the possible positive have now been highlighted here, okay.

So let's just have a look at these.

So the ones that I've highlighted as possible positives are the same level of service across the whole country.

So you have equality of service.

And then across on the other side, at the top, any infrastructure would be the same across the whole country.

Infrastructure being things like railway services, making sure that the tracks are the same distance apart or the same type of road surfaces are used on motorways.

Okay next line down, on the left, greater job security for employees within government-owned services.

I guess the idea there that if it's a private business it might go bust.

You know, it might go out of business.

Whereas, that's not going to be the case with the government.

The government's not going to go out of business, it's going to be there.

And then the bottom row, in the middle we've got wealth distribution can take place as high earning individuals and businesses will pay more tax.

So just sort of like distributing the wealth.

Okay there, and then at the bottom, on the right, some services may not exist otherwise if it wasn't for government ownership, such as local bus routes.

So those are the ones that are seen as the positives, okay.

The other ones would be seen as negatives.

Let's just go through those.

Governments may only be in power for five years so policies on running services could change frequently 'cause we have a five year fixed term.

So each five years, we need to have a general election.

You could have a political party if you have a different view on how that particular service could be run.

The middle one there, right in the middle on the second row, expertise may be lost as salaries are sometimes better in the private sector.

Not always, just sometimes.

So that might be a bit of an issue with government ownership.

On the right hand side there, in the middle, people may prefer to pay for a service if they want it, rather than paying taxes for something they might not use, such as a library.

That's quite a common argument, that one, for private ownership.

And then on the bottom, on the left, long term investment in services may not occur.

Again, it may occur, but it also may not.

Many of these things here can be turned around depending on how you want to place them into an argument and on people's political viewpoints as well.

So if you didn't necessarily get the same ones as me there, that's not really a problem because probably, you could explain to someone why you chose something as being positive or negative.

As long as you can justify your choice, then that's fine, that's great, okay.

Right, we're going to do an exam style question now, I guess.

I'm going to ask you in a moment to pause the video but first of all, just listen through the task.

I'm going to ask you to agree or disagree with the following statement, 'Public services should all be owned by the UK government'.

So I've put the all in there, that's quite important.

So what I'm saying is, do you agree or disagree that public services, all of them, should be owned by the government or not.

If you disagree, you think that there should be perhaps some private ownership or perhaps you think there should be all private ownership of the services.

Okay use your lists of suggested reasons why the government should or should not own all public services to answer this question.

Aim to write three paragraphs, making a different point in each one; you can quote from the people whose views we have heard in support of your argument, okay.

So if you feel happy and comfortable to do that, you can just pause now and go and do that.

And then when you restart, you'll see me read through a model answer paragraph.

If you're not sure yet how you would go about that, perhaps just wait and have a look at the model answer paragraph with me and then that might give you the confidence to go and write another couple of paragraphs of your own.

If you'd like to push yourself, you could look at doing both sides of the argument.

Agree for three paragraphs and disagree for three paragraphs.

Then perhaps draw some evaluative conclusion at the end, if you can.

Okay let's have a look at this model answer paragraph, Okay, so I'm just going to read this through and kind of explain what I've done as I go through it.

One reason why the statement is correct is that some services probably would not exist without government ownership.

So I'm doing the I agree with this statement.

If a private business owned all the bus services in a county, it would only want to run the bus routes that brought in a profit.

In other words, some rural services connecting small villages to towns would be too expensive to run as the cost would not be covered.

As a result, those services would end.

Okay so I've made my point and then I've explained it with a couple of sentences there.

Government ownership can spread the income from other services to cover all service costs and there is less emphasis on profit.

So I'm kind of making it clear that I would rather have government ownership in that statement there, that's what I'm saying there.

And then I end by just including one of the views that we got, one of our sources.

As Professor Cumber says, these are services we need so we should own them.

Okay so that would be the kind of styling which you do that and if I was to carry on, I'd then say, another reason why the statement is correct is that, and then I would give another reason from my positives of government ownership.

Okay, if I was doing the other side, I'd be using all the things that were mentioned particularly on the slides with reference to Margaret Thatcher, okay.

So if you've written those today, if you've written your answer there, I'm absolutely certain that if you were able to then take that in to your teacher, or if you were able to type it and send that to your teacher, I'm sure they would love to see what you've done.

I would be really pleased if any of my students did that for me so I hope you have enjoyed today's lesson.

And I will see you again with my next lesson, which is going to be looking at risk management.

Okay, bye for now.