Hello, my name is Mrs. Tomassi, and I'm gonna be working through with you on your Citizenship lesson today.

Hopefully you're settled, you've got everything you need for our lesson.

If that's the case, then we'll get started.

The title of today's lesson is "Should moral decisions be decided by a referendum," and this one part of the unit on how can politicians involve citizens in direct decision-making.

Hopefully by the end of the lesson today, you'll be able to create a reasoned argument whether moral decisions should be decided by a referendum.

There are some ground rules for the lesson today.

Laura says, "Listen to others.

It's okay to disagree with each other, but we should listen properly before making assumptions or deciding how to respond.

When disagreeing, challenge the statement, not the person." Andeep says, "Respect privacy.

We can discuss examples, but do not use names or descriptions that identify anyone, including ourselves." Jacob says, "No judgement.

We can explore beliefs and misunderstandings about a topic without fear of being judged." And Izzy says, "Choose your level of participation.

So everyone has the right to choose not to answer a question or join in discussion.

We never put anyone on the spot." So that leads us on to our keywords.

We've got two keywords in the lesson today.

The first is rights.

Rights are something we are entitled to by law.

The next is referendum.

This is a general vote by the electorate on a single political issue which has been referred to them for a direct decision.

It is a form of direct democracy.

Both of these keywords will be in bold throughout the lesson.

So if you look at it and you're hmm, can't remember what that is, you can refer back to it here.

We'll make a start.

We've got two learning cycles and the first is how are moral decisions made in the UK? So you can start thinking what are moral decisions? And if you already know that, how are they made in the UK? Have you got any idea? We're gonna have a look at what they are, so can you think what a moral decision is? Maybe you could think of some examples of one.

Now, moral decisions are choices based on values.

So it's this idea of things that are right or wrong.

And they often involve big questions around some difficult or tricky controversial topics.

So these might include things like human rights, ethics, what's fair or just, justice and equality, and health.

Now the thing is with these, because like we're saying they're about right or wrong, lots of people have different values and not everyone's values are the same.

So these are why the topics can be controversial because what one person might say, yeah, that's fair or just, someone else might say, actually it's not because you haven't thought of X, Y, Z.

So it's always an ongoing topic.

To give you a bit of an example, so the Dignity in Dying campaign is an example of people that are trying to influence a moral decision.

What they're doing is they're working to change the laws on assisted dying and the ways that they've been doing this is through lobbying MPs and raising awareness.

And what they want to do is support changes to the Assisted Dying Bill for the UK Parliament.

Shows you a bit of an example of the type of topics and also the steps that they're going to influence those decisions that come through Parliament.

Hopefully also that gives you a bit of an idea of where the decisions are made in the UK.

The UK Government is responsible for making moral decisions and they do it through laws and policies.

Now, these decisions, like we are saying, they can be controversial because we're talking about people's values.

Now, these values can be personal to people, they can also be cultural.

So it can be difficult to ensure that a wide range of views are included when thinking of these decisions.

Can you think how they might do that or how could you try to include everyone? What kind of things could you do? So one way that the UK Government do it is through something called ethics committees.

Now, ethics committees help to ensure that the decisions are well thought through, and they are a group of independent experts.

So if you think what's independent, so they're sitting separately and they're trying to help the government think carefully about these decisions and about these issues and the different kind of sides to the stories as well.

Because the idea is that they will have an understanding of that field, which may be the UK Government, the MPs might not know so much.

So how do ethic committees support the moral decision-making process? A, they give expert, independent advice.

B, they vote on laws in Parliament.

C, a organised public protest against new laws.

It is A, so they're there to give expert independent advice to help the UK Government ensure that the decisions they are making are well thought through.

So why are they set up? Why do we have ethics committees? What do you think? By having them, it makes sure decisions are fair and respect important moral principles.

It's providing advice based on evidence and ethical thinking.

So it's not just somebody's opinion, they're backing it up with the evidence.

And especially when issues are complicated or sensitive, you definitely want case studies.

You want evidence to say, look, this is what's happened and this is the impact.

It also encourages public trust because it's showing that the moral issues are being taken seriously, that it's really been thought through.

To give you a bit of an example, the Independent Committee on Standards in Public Life has examined whether MPs should be allowed to have outside jobs or financial interest while serving.

The reason this is set up is to ensure that their actions are transparent and in the public's best interests.

And this is one of many different ethics committees.

They're all set up so that they all have the independent expert advice for each one, so they have lots of different committees.

But it's important to point out they don't have ethics committees for every decision as this could be extremely time-consuming.

So instead, they also do something else.

Have you got any idea what that is? So what they also do is they might set up public consultations to gather opinions.

Do you know what a public consultation is? So public consultations will involve members of the public and it is there to gather their opinions and ideas on a set issue or policy that is being examined.

To give you an example, so before the Public Order Act 2023 came in place, the Government had a consultation, and this was mainly though with law enforcement and National Highways, and what it was all about was about new rules on protests.

So you might have heard about this one.

Having a look there, what do you think if they've had a consultation and it's about protesting, but the people there are mainly about law enforcement and National Highways? So what happened was that the House of Lords Scrutiny Committee actually said that the consultation should have been broader.

They recommended including like civil liberties organisations because that way you're getting the other side of the story and it means that you're getting more diverse views because this policy was controversial.

Once it was passed, the act introduced new limits on protest activity.

Now following this, some people supported it because they said, "Actually, yeah, that's great for public safety." However, some said that it restricted the rights to peaceful protest.

Now, if we think about it, and if you've done human rights, you'll know that that's a human right.

What this led to was some organisations, you might have heard of Greenpeace and Liberty, they challenged part of the act and they used a petition and they got over 300,000 signatures.

Again, if you remember back, do you know much about petitions? So after 10,000, what happens? You get a response.

Over 100,000 signatures, it gets debated in Parliament.

So that's what then happened here.

And we'll have a little look later on in the lesson about what happened following this.

Like in this case, we said that it impacts rights.

So moral decisions do tend to impact human rights.

Now, in the UK, human rights are legally protected by the Human Rights Act of 1998.

If a government decision seems to violate human rights, do you know what can happen? What could you do? So it could be challenged in court.

Did you manage to get that one? It could be opposed through public campaigns, or it could be debated in Parliament or the media.

So there are different routes to go down.

Now, if we go back to that case, we said they got over 300,000 signatures.

So what happened? In this case, it got debated in Parliament, but that wasn't just all that happened with this.

Greenpeace and Liberty argued that the Public Order Act 2023 restricted the right to peaceful protest, which is protected by human rights laws.

And this led to a judicial review in 2024 where the Court of Appeal ruled the Government's use of redefining serious disruption as more than minor was unlawful.

So what happened in this case was they found they didn't challenge the entire act, they found little parts of it, which was then challenged in court.

And in this case, it was the use of language because previously, yes, you have the right to peaceful protest, but for in this act the wording of the disruption was changed from serious disruption to more than minor.

And what the organisations were arguing is that that was unlawful.

This was then ruled by the judges in the judicial review.

So the court found that the consultation process, so what we looked at earlier, which involved members of the law enforcement and the National Highways, was an unfair process because it lacked input from affected groups.

The Government appealed the decision, but in May 2025, the Court of Appeal rejected did the case.

So confirming changes must respect the right to peaceful process.

If you're interested in this study, you might want to keep an eye on it because this is where we're at at the moment and this case may still evolve in the future.

So you could always have a look for any updates on this one.

Fill in the blanks.

The Public Order 2023 introduced new limits on protest activity.

Before the law was passed, the Government held a with law enforcement and National Highways.

Some groups challenged the act, which led to a review where the court examined if the law was fair and lawful.

Did you manage to get them? So the first one is the Public Order Act 2023.

And then the second one, the Government held a consultation with law enforcement and National Highways.

And then finally, some groups challenged the act, which led to a judicial review.

Hopefully, you managed to get them.

And then that moves us onto our first task for today.

So Izzy says, "It's not fair that the Government makes all moral decisions on their own." Explain to Izzy how other people and organisations can be involved in moral decision-making processes in the UK.

Include the use of consultations and ethic committees and how decisions can be challenged.

If you wanna take some time to think about how you could put that together, and then when you're ready, we'll go through the feedback.

How did you find that? Might have styled it differently.

This is just showing you how you put it into those full paragraphs, so like you were writing for the GCSE.

But again, it is just looking for those main different ideas in there.

So the things like public consultations and ethic committees, judicial reviews.

We will go through this one just to give you an idea.

So in the UK, the Government is responsible for making decisions themselves.

However, they do involve other people and organisations to help ensure the decision-making process is more fair and balanced.

For instance, the Government could hold public consultations where they ask for opinions from different groups or organisations.

There are also ethics committees made up of independent experts who give advice on difficult moral issues.

These committees ensure decisions are fair and respect people's rights.

Finally, if people disagree with a government decision, they can challenge it.

This can be done through petitions or taking legal action through a process called judicial review.

For example, Liberty and Greenpeace challenged parts of the Public Order Act 2023 for restricting the right peaceful to protest and this was accepted by the Court of Appeal.

So how did you get on? You might have wanted to have a look back at yours and check that you managed to get those ideas in as well.

If you're happy with that, then we will move on to the second learning cycle.

So we're now gonna look at how else can moral decisions be made? So we've seen what happens in the UK, if you're familiar with other countries, maybe you've got an idea of what happens there.

So Alex says, "Are all moral decisions made by the Government in other countries?" What do you think about this? So some actually choose to involve citizens in their processes.

Now, this could include the use of referendums. Remember what a referendum is? So that idea of having that vote and say in the decision-making process.

Even when countries actually use the same methods, so if you had two countries that both use referendums, it still can look different in each country of how it works.

There's no right or wrong, and each country does what suits their culture, values, religion, and history.

So sometimes these values also change over time, and methods, so such as referendums, can help to reflect that change.

And they also might be part of that change in how things work as well.

So to give you an idea, in 2011, Malta held a national referendum asking the public whether divorce should be legalised.

This is actually quite a recent thing because at the time, it was actually one of the few countries where divorce was still not permitted.

This is the country's own values where it was considered a controversial topic in Malta due to strong moral and cultural values.

So although the Government had previously not supported legalising divorce, 53% of voters chose to support it.

And as a result, the Government passed a law to legalise divorce.

So this again shows you how the Government had an idea and a decision, but instead they've chose to put it to referendum of the citizens who have supported the change.

And because of this, regardless of what the Government do or do not believe, they then implement what the public have voted.

So another one we've got in Ireland, abortion was banned.

And again, this reflects the strong Catholic values that have shaped the country's laws.

Now, some of the pros and cons of this were some believed that the ban violated women's rights, whereas others felt that it was morally wrong under any circumstances.

Now, what ended up happening was that the Irish Government in 2018 put this to a referendum.

Now, the majority of 66% voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment, which meant that new laws were passed allowing abortion under certain conditions, and it reflected the change in public values that has happened over time.

And finally, we're gonna have a look at another referendum example.

So a proposal was made in Switzerland to completely ban animal testing, so including medical research and product safety.

Now, this raised questions about animal rights versus human rights and scientific progress because the idea if it was banned for all medical research as well to uphold some human rights.

So in this case, some believe that animal testing is cruel and morally wrong, whereas others argued that medical research often relies on animal testing to save human lives.

So this is where the balance argument came here.

In this case, a national referendum was held and 79% of voters rejected the proposal.

So this meant that they didn't ban all animal testing and it could continue with strict regulations.

So all three of those examples that we looked at show you some different types of moral decisions where the governments have put it to a referendum for the country to decide.

Match the correct country to the referendum.

So Ireland, Malta, and Switzerland.

You've got the 2022 referendum on banning animal testing, 2018 referendum on legalising abortion, 2011 referendum on legalising divorce.

So Ireland was 2018, Malta 2011, and Switzerland 2022.

So what are the strengths of using referendums to make moral decisions? We've had a look at some different case studies there, you might know some more across the world as well.

Can you think about them and think about what is good about using referendums to make those moral decisions instead of maybe the Government deciding it themselves? So some things you might have thought of, citizens can decide directly.

So in Malta, the citizens voted to legalise divorce even though the Government was against it.

So maybe sometimes the Government might actually have a different opinion to what the public think.

Also, societies evolve over time.

Referendums let the laws catch up.

So in Ireland, the vote on abortion showed a major shift in public attitudes.

And by holding a referendum, it allows that law to catch up with those changes.

Referendums raise awareness and they start conversations on difficult topics.

Now, you might be saying actually, well yes, that's a good thing, but that could be a weakness if the topic is really controversial.

And of course, yes, it can.

So it's good because it might get people talking about things.

So like in Switzerland, ethics and science becomes a topic.

Yes, it could also be a weakness because it could create some really emotional responses.

So we'll look at the weaknesses now.

Can you think of any other weaknesses? It could be the case that actually some topics are really complex.

So if topics are talked about and the public don't understand, it could mean that the decision that they make isn't quite informed, which could skew the result.

So in Switzerland, voters rejected a ban possibly without understanding research impacts or alternatives.

Campaigns could be influenced by the media or there could be a spread of misinformation.

So in Ireland, some groups raised concerns that emotional pressure could impact how people voted.

And then finally, referendums require organisation, campaigning, and education on topics.

And that could take up a lot of resources.

That means maybe not all countries could do it regularly or can't afford to run them.

You may want to, if you can think, take some time now to see if you can think of the strengths and weaknesses.

Maybe you could start to think of what side you sit on, whether it's good to use referendums for moral decisions or not.

Can you tick whether the statements are strengths or weaknesses of using referendums to make moral decisions? We've got strengths and weaknesses.

We've got societies evolve over time and referendums show public attitudes.

There could be a spread of misinformation leading up to a referendum.

Referendums require time to organise.

Referendums raise awareness of controversial topics.

Did you manage to get the first one is a strength? We've then got weaknesses.

Time to organise is a weakness, and raising awareness is a strength.

Now, this moves us on to the final task for today.

So university is holding a consultation to help decide whether staff should have the right to search students' belongings.

Alex says, "I think this should be decided by a referendum where all students get to vote as it impacts us." Izzy says, "I think that only the school staff should make this decision, as it involves students' safety." Give arguments for and against having a referendum to decide this issue.

Consider points about fairness and safety.

So take some time, and actually if you're with somebody, maybe you might wanna have a discussion with them so you could hear different points of view.

If you haven't got anyone, then you really gotta try and think of both sides to this argument.

And once you've got your arguments, and if you are with somebody, you might actually want to hold the debate between you.

If not, when you got your arguments, if you unpause, then we can go through the feedback together.

So how did you get on? Did you manage to debate this topic? Or if not, did you managed to get some different ideas down? So your response could look like this.

I believe there are good reasons both for and against deciding this issue by referendum.

A referendum would allow students to have a direct say on whether staff can search belongings.

This is fair because it affects everyone's privacy and safety.

When people vote, the decision reflects the views of the whole community, not just the staff.

It also encourages students to learn about their rights and get involved in decision-making.

However, this is a complicated issue that involves school safety and legal responsibilities.

Staff may need to act quickly to keep everyone safe, and a referendum might slow down important decisions.

Also, some students might not fully understand the legal and safety issues involved, which can lead to poor choices.

It might be better for trained staff and school leaders to make these decisions while listening to student views through other methods like meetings or surveys.

In conclusion, while a referendum could make the decision more democratic, it might not always be the best way to handle complex safety matters.

There's a balance between student involvement and expert judgement that is important.

So did you manage to get some ideas like that? Maybe you've managed to think of some different things as well.

Again, remember what we said.

The more views that you can incorporate and that you can get, the more diverse responses and ideas will be suggested.

Now, this brings an end to this lesson.

So we're just gonna summarise.

Moral decisions often involve questions around topics, such as human rights, ethics, justice, equality, and health.

These decisions can be controversial because people have different values.

In the UK, moral decisions are often made by the UK Government.

They can be influenced by campaign groups, ethic committees, and public consultations.

If people disagree with these decisions, they can challenge them in court or campaign for change.

Some countries involve citizens in moral decisions through the use of referendums. For example, Malta held a referendum in 2011 on whether divorce should be legalised.

Referendums can help to reflect change in attitudes over time.

However, they can be costly to organise and run.

And that's our summary brought to an end.

So hopefully now you've got an idea of where you sit of whether moral decisions should be decided by referendum and have learned a little bit more about how moral decisions are made in the UK and other countries.

Thanks for working with me today and hope you enjoy the rest of your day.