:00:10. > :00:13.take it out of their hands. Thank On Newsnight Scotland tonight,
:00:13. > :00:16.unemployment's up a bit, but not much.
:00:16. > :00:18.The real mystery - why are there so many more private sector jobs when
:00:18. > :00:21.we're supposed to be in a recession?
:00:21. > :00:28.And would you believe we've went and got a Dutch princess what'll
:00:28. > :00:31.tell us how to talk proper! Good evening. The number out of
:00:31. > :00:34.work here rose by 4,000 in the three months to July. It's not a
:00:34. > :00:37.large increase, but it does check a recent run where unemployment was
:00:37. > :00:40.falling. It's also the first time Scottish unemployment has been
:00:40. > :00:43.higher than the UK average since the beginning of the year, although
:00:43. > :00:51.the rate is still lower than in many areas of England, including
:00:51. > :00:57.London and the Midlands. The proportion of people in work in
:00:57. > :01:02.Scotland is still higher than the UK average, but it's 71.4%. It's
:01:02. > :01:06.only fractionally higher. But it does point to something very
:01:06. > :01:12.curious going on in the world of work, and if you've recently lost
:01:13. > :01:16.your job or can't find one, then apologies for even asking this
:01:16. > :01:21.question - but why are so many people still employed? After all,
:01:21. > :01:24.we are in the throes of a double- dip recession. Public sector
:01:25. > :01:28.employment has been falling and is likely to fall further because of
:01:28. > :01:33.cuts in public spending, but private sector employment has been
:01:33. > :01:38.increasing at a rate that has economists bemused. The Bank of
:01:38. > :01:44.England calls it "particularly puzzling." That's Central Banker
:01:44. > :01:47.speak for "What on earth is going on?" Everyone hopes there is a
:01:48. > :01:53.simple explanation. The economy isn't in nearly as bad a state as
:01:53. > :01:56.the growth figures imply. I think it's in the nature of the change of
:01:56. > :02:00.work. I think companies are more reluctant than they used to be
:02:00. > :02:05.around taking on permanent, full- time staff, and they now are
:02:05. > :02:13.seeking to have tasks done and will bring in staff on short-term
:02:13. > :02:17.contracts in order to fulfil these tasks. There is one contentious
:02:17. > :02:22.implication in all of this - in effect, we're now employing more
:02:22. > :02:26.people to make less stuff, to provide fewer services. Now, if all
:02:26. > :02:30.of those people can simply produce more once the economy picks up,
:02:30. > :02:34.there's not much of a problem, but if there is little compare capacity,
:02:34. > :02:38.to use the jargon, that won't happen. Maybe a whole swathe of the
:02:38. > :02:42.economy just disappeared during the financial crash and won't come back
:02:42. > :02:46.- in which case, even if the employment figures are better than
:02:46. > :02:49.expected, we could be in trouble. I'm joined now by Ailsa McKay,
:02:49. > :02:56.who's professor of economics at Glasgow Caledonian University, and
:02:56. > :03:00.by John McLaren of the Centre for Public Policy for Regions. Now, you
:03:00. > :03:04.have produced a list of reasons as long as your arm for why this odd
:03:04. > :03:07.thing might be the case that we're in a recession, but private sector
:03:07. > :03:12.employment is going up quite strongly. The interesting thing,
:03:12. > :03:17.isn't it, that none of them really account for it. None of them
:03:17. > :03:21.account for it - things like a move to part-time work because of the
:03:21. > :03:24.productivity in terms of pay-out work is declining as well. I think
:03:24. > :03:28.there are a few that are more persuasive than others - for
:03:28. > :03:32.example, output in the North Sea has gone down a lot. There's hardly
:03:32. > :03:36.anybody employed there now. Output in financial services has gone down
:03:36. > :03:41.a lot. They're quite well paid, so those would both bring productivity
:03:41. > :03:44.down. As well on the self-employed - there is a big rise there, and we
:03:44. > :03:50.don't really know how much these people are earning, so they may be
:03:50. > :03:53.sort of like jobs, but certainly not very well-paid jobs, not like
:03:53. > :03:58.self-employed jobs in the past. However, even if those and a few
:03:58. > :04:02.other things help explain it, it's still very difficult to come to a
:04:02. > :04:05.position where the economy - GDP - is flat lining and employment is
:04:05. > :04:11.actually going up. That is particularly strange. It is, isn't
:04:11. > :04:15.it? Have you got any thoughts on this? Again, we should say that net
:04:15. > :04:22.employment is going up even though right across the UK there's a
:04:22. > :04:25.rather large fall in public sector employment because of the cuts -
:04:25. > :04:30.despite that, employment is going up. I would agree with the comments
:04:30. > :04:34.made by David Bell in the video about the nature of jobs being
:04:34. > :04:39.created, and our labour market is significantly different from five,
:04:40. > :04:45.six years ago. Those types of jobs are less secure, more volatile,
:04:45. > :04:51.things like zero air contracts. Sorry. What's... Zero air contracts
:04:51. > :04:56.- people who are employed but they get paid if they work an hour.
:04:56. > :05:02.They're contracted to work an hour. They're officially employed, things
:05:02. > :05:07.like my own industry, lekturing. People can be on zero air contracts.
:05:07. > :05:12.They're used more and more. That's directly hitting women. Women who
:05:12. > :05:16.are in the public sector have seen their terms of conditions
:05:16. > :05:21.deteriorating significantly. Those who can retain their jobs are
:05:21. > :05:24.finding their conditions curtailed, so it's not sustainable. One of the
:05:24. > :05:28.paradoxes of this is I'm sure what you're saying is part of the
:05:28. > :05:33.explanation, but in fact you quote figures showing that actually the
:05:33. > :05:37.number of hours worked is going up, so it can't just be there's a lot
:05:37. > :05:40.more people doing very little. There's... Maybe part of it.
:05:40. > :05:46.There's a whole series of things - there hasn't been much new
:05:47. > :05:51.investment, so the mash threens are getting older, less productive.
:05:51. > :05:55.There may have been innovation because small companies are
:05:55. > :06:00.struggling to find the finance and spending all of their time just
:06:00. > :06:04.trying to stay alive rather than innovate, so all of these things
:06:04. > :06:10.can - when normally that would feed in, but still... There is wire here
:06:10. > :06:14.as well, isn't there? Just on that point, one possible explanation is
:06:14. > :06:17.banks forebearing on basically pulling the plug on businesses
:06:17. > :06:21.because they still, despite everything, feel some sort of
:06:21. > :06:24.obligation not to do that but doesn't there tend to be a thing
:06:24. > :06:28.where when the economy starts to grow again, the banks pull the plug,
:06:28. > :06:32.so we could actually see a spike in unemployment? We could do, but I
:06:32. > :06:37.think it's also an issue about how we measure productivity, and what
:06:37. > :06:41.do we mean by that and how do we - as economists, we traditionally
:06:41. > :06:46.measure increases in output by how much stuff, as you say, we produce,
:06:46. > :06:49.and the market value of that stuff. We're moving, as I said, our labour
:06:49. > :06:54.market is shifting quite significantly, and we're moving
:06:54. > :06:57.more towards a more service- orientated sector, which is
:06:57. > :07:01.extremely important to sustain local communities. How do we
:07:01. > :07:04.measure the productivity of caring for an elderly relative or the
:07:04. > :07:09.productivity of childcare, the numbers of children who go through
:07:09. > :07:13.the system? It's not an adequate or accurate measure of the amount of
:07:13. > :07:16.activity and hours people spend on that activity. Yeah, but again,
:07:16. > :07:21.that's true, but we're still left with this slight mystery, aren't
:07:21. > :07:26.we? I think that helps explain part of the mystery because productivity
:07:26. > :07:29.is particularly poorly measured in the public sector, so it always has
:07:29. > :07:34.lower - often zero productivity growth. Now, if that's been
:07:34. > :07:36.maintained, and the private sector has shrunk, that'll reduce
:07:36. > :07:40.productivity. It doesn't work so much in the last year when it's the
:07:40. > :07:46.private sector jobs that have been coming back, in but they could
:07:46. > :07:49.again be poorly paid private sector jobs, so that is part, I think,
:07:49. > :07:54.of... The quite contentious issue in this, isn't it, is whether - if
:07:54. > :07:58.you take the view that there's lots of spare capacity in the economy.
:07:58. > :08:01.It's just there isn't enough demand. Companies are keeping workers on.
:08:01. > :08:05.When things pick up, they they'll start producing more and
:08:05. > :08:08.productivity will rise again. It's kind of OK, isn't it? It's this
:08:08. > :08:12.other view that seems to be around that part of the economy has just
:08:12. > :08:15.gone. There isn't much spare capacity, and actually, there is
:08:15. > :08:20.very little scope for increases in productivity when the economy
:08:20. > :08:24.recovers. I think that the big issue behind all of this still is,
:08:24. > :08:28.is there really growth there? And if not, then how do you get the
:08:28. > :08:33.growth to return? Again, if you looked at the borrowing figures,
:08:33. > :08:37.they kind of back up the GDP figures because borrowing has
:08:37. > :08:43.increased again largely due to low taxation, which means low profits
:08:43. > :08:47.from companies, I think, so I think that - I think that the tendency is
:08:47. > :08:52.more to the look - the labour market figures - the figures are
:08:52. > :08:55.overly optimistic, I think, at the minute, and the GDP... Do you think
:08:55. > :08:58.that is case? Yeah, I think sustainable economic growth is what
:08:58. > :09:02.we're talking about when the economy maybe comes back to a point
:09:02. > :09:05.when you're saying that we can make more stuff, and do we have enough
:09:05. > :09:09.people and enough productivity to make that stuff? I think we can't
:09:09. > :09:13.rely on the private sector to do that for, and as we continue to cut
:09:13. > :09:18.the public sector, and as we continue to cut jobs for women in
:09:18. > :09:21.the public sector, then we're not going to stimulate the economy in a
:09:21. > :09:25.way that the economists tell us that that particular investment
:09:25. > :09:29.will do. There's too much volatility and uncertainty in
:09:29. > :09:33.global financial markets for us to rely on private sector investment.
:09:33. > :09:37.I am curious as to whether it's your sense - look, only a few
:09:37. > :09:42.months ago everyone was saying it's very curious - it looks like the
:09:42. > :09:46.economy is doing very badly, but anecdotal evidence is things are
:09:46. > :09:50.getting better, and all of these things like purchasing managers -
:09:50. > :09:54.indices were showing actually the economy wasn't doing as bad. That
:09:54. > :10:00.seems to have stalled. People were saying, as John was saying,
:10:00. > :10:05.actually, things are looking as bad as the GDP figures are saying. I am
:10:05. > :10:09.curious what your sense is of that. I have just come from the woman's
:10:09. > :10:12.summit on employment today where the First Minister addressed the
:10:12. > :10:16.conference about women concerned about their role in the Scottish
:10:16. > :10:19.economy. We do have a problem with regard to women's employment and
:10:19. > :10:23.with regard to sustainable economic growth. So my sense, in terms of
:10:24. > :10:26.your question, is the situation is getting bleaker for women and women
:10:26. > :10:30.in local communities in Scotland, women as workers. I heard stories
:10:30. > :10:34.today from women who are trying to retain their jobs, women who are
:10:34. > :10:38.trying to get back into the labour market, is it's access and
:10:38. > :10:41.retention, but also from employers who are finding the cost
:10:41. > :10:50.associated... The figures today show that actually employment for
:10:50. > :10:53.That's one particular quarter and one particular statistic. It could
:10:54. > :10:57.be a blip. The long-term trend since the recovery period is that
:10:57. > :11:03.women are loseing their jobs at a faster rate than men. And male
:11:04. > :11:08.employment is on the increase. almost, the biggest increase by far
:11:08. > :11:16.was for women employment in the last year has been for part-time,
:11:16. > :11:22.self-employed work which is hardly likely to be profitable. We come
:11:22. > :11:25.full circle. Scots, Gallic, Doric, the lists of languages and dialects
:11:25. > :11:30.is extensive. Very often we're judged on the way we speak and
:11:30. > :11:34.write. The nation has a problem with literacy. This International
:11:34. > :11:36.Literacy Day David Allison reports on the tension between diversity of
:11:36. > :11:42.culture and the increasing need for global communication.
:11:42. > :11:45.In days gone by in the era of manual labour you could argue
:11:45. > :11:51.literacy was less important than in today's globalised world where you
:11:51. > :11:55.need to be able to read and write to participate. The gap between the
:11:55. > :11:59.literate and illiterate is widening. It's something the Scottish
:11:59. > :12:04.Government is committed to tackling with the aim of seeing a real
:12:04. > :12:08.difference in literacy and numeracy standards by 2020. Whereas maybe in
:12:08. > :12:13.a very simple society, for want of a better way of putting it, one
:12:14. > :12:17.could muddle by, I think, now it is much more difficult. You need, you
:12:17. > :12:23.know, greater levels of sophistication to get into a job.
:12:23. > :12:27.Projects like this, adult literacy programme, as well as education in
:12:27. > :12:32.prisons, can help, but the problem is huge. One in four Scots
:12:32. > :12:37.experience problems with reading. What about culture? Language varies
:12:37. > :12:40.in terms of dialect, accent, grammar, vocabulary and that's just
:12:40. > :12:45.in Scotland. What's the danger of standardising it? And what's the
:12:45. > :12:50.danger if you don't? The issue of course is not just a Scottish one.
:12:50. > :12:54.It's European wide. Today a Dutch Princess, who's passionate about
:12:54. > :13:00.literacy was in Edinburgh calling for a target of 100% able to read
:13:00. > :13:04.and write. The UNESCO Special Envoy and chair of the literacy group
:13:04. > :13:09.says cultural diversity should be no excuse for literacy. Language is
:13:09. > :13:13.a moving target. It's constantly developing, always has over the
:13:13. > :13:20.venchries and centuries. We need to treasure that. We need to encourage
:13:20. > :13:23.that development. That is all fine for you and I to have an SMS
:13:23. > :13:28.conversation and that we have our abbreviations, which becomes a
:13:28. > :13:34.language in itself, but you cannot do, write an application letter to
:13:34. > :13:39.find a job in your SMS language. Similarly, in dialects or in own
:13:39. > :13:46.languages, if you want to apply for a job where they don't speak that
:13:46. > :13:51.dialect, you need another language. So for me, it's always been the end
:13:51. > :13:55.-- and, and approach not the either-or approach. People almost
:13:55. > :14:00.need to be multilingual even in their own language. Absolutely.
:14:00. > :14:03.someone hears "I have went" and that's their normal, how much
:14:03. > :14:07.should you challenge things like that in terms of creating an idea
:14:07. > :14:12.of common literacy? And how much should you accept something like
:14:12. > :14:16.that? Again, the crucial thing is understanding that we teach young
:14:16. > :14:20.people to understand what's appropriate when and know and
:14:20. > :14:26.recognise the difference and then be able to move between those two
:14:26. > :14:30.different approaches. I don't think it helps at all to stigmatise
:14:30. > :14:34.perfectly respectable good dialects. Indeed we all enjoy a good dialect
:14:34. > :14:39.done well, why would we want to stigmatise that and make people
:14:39. > :14:42.feel ashamed of having it? Advocates of literacy point out
:14:42. > :14:45.illiteracy isn't just a problem for the person concerned. It's bad for
:14:45. > :14:49.the economy. It can be expensive picking up the pieces and it's
:14:49. > :14:55.socially devicive. But that doesn't mean finding a solution is any
:14:55. > :14:58.easier. I'm joined now by Sue Ellis of
:14:58. > :15:04.Strathclyde University who's a specialist on how children learn to
:15:04. > :15:09.be literate. First of all, I mean, part of me -- apart from the
:15:09. > :15:14.obvious, reading and writing, what do we mean by literacy? There are
:15:14. > :15:17.different definitions. One is a basic definition that you can
:15:18. > :15:22.decode print. That's what England's education policy seems to be
:15:22. > :15:25.working to Atkins -- at the moment. There's another one that said you
:15:25. > :15:31.can decode and understand it and use to to think critically about
:15:31. > :15:36.the world and to help you. I know, look, your specialism is with the
:15:36. > :15:39.younger, we hear all these stories about university lecturers,
:15:39. > :15:44.employers saying that people they take on and students they have
:15:44. > :15:49.don't have basic standards of literacy. It's that second sense
:15:49. > :15:54.that people are missing. Now, the current jobs that you need, you
:15:54. > :15:59.need to be very much more literate than in the past. So, that's a big
:15:59. > :16:03.part of being literate. But, so I don't know that actually true that
:16:03. > :16:07.people are less literate than they used to be. Is it just that what,
:16:07. > :16:12.for example... The expectations are higher. 30, 40 years ago, I don't
:16:12. > :16:17.know, maybe 7% of people would have gone to university, now what almost
:16:17. > :16:21.50% go into higher education. Is it a product of that? Or is there a
:16:21. > :16:29.change in literacy levels? I think literacy levels are getting better.
:16:29. > :16:35.They're not getting worse. I think that the real issue is about how we
:16:35. > :16:39.engage children in literacy. The biggest problem facing Scotland is
:16:39. > :16:44.that socio-economic status predicts how quickly a child will learn to
:16:44. > :16:48.read and write. Isn't that true everywhere? Yeah, but it doesn't
:16:49. > :16:55.necessarily need to be so. would you tackle that? One of the
:16:55. > :17:00.things that the PISA report shows is that if you can engage children
:17:00. > :17:06.in literacy and improvement engagement you can mitigate, 30% of
:17:06. > :17:10.the effect of socio-economic status and 70% of the effect of gender.
:17:10. > :17:15.What you mean when you say engage them in literacy, I mean is it
:17:15. > :17:20.about for example getting children to read books and get in the habit
:17:20. > :17:23.of reading books rather than just know how to... It's about people
:17:23. > :17:27.who want to read, who have the books they want to read available
:17:27. > :17:32.to them, the time to read and the place to read. Schools can do a
:17:32. > :17:35.huge amount to teach for that. It needs teachers who are
:17:35. > :17:40.knowledgeable about the books that out there and the books that are
:17:40. > :17:44.recently publish ready out there. It needs teachers who understand
:17:44. > :17:48.about who can make literacy part of the social fabric of the classroom.
:17:48. > :17:52.So you say to children, not just I want you to read this book, but
:17:52. > :17:55.getting children to recommend books to each other. If you think of the
:17:55. > :17:59.last few books you read, you probably were recommended to read
:17:59. > :18:04.them by your friends. So having friends who recommend books for you
:18:04. > :18:10.is a very important thing to do. We know that if you can improve
:18:10. > :18:15.literacy engagement - I can just imagine a primary school teacher
:18:16. > :18:19.watching this, making a face and saying "Oh, yeah right, in your
:18:19. > :18:24.dreams." Absolutely not. Primary teachers do it all the time. It's a
:18:24. > :18:30.major part of primary teaching getting kids to read and love
:18:30. > :18:34.reading. It's a major part of what we train teachers to do. Has there
:18:34. > :18:38.been a problem Where we have perhaps a generation, which you
:18:38. > :18:41.might be trying to correct who maybe don't do that? In society
:18:41. > :18:45.there are different views about what reading is for. Some say
:18:45. > :18:48.reading is about relaxation and pleasure and enjoyment. Others will
:18:48. > :18:53.say reading is important, but it's important to get a job and it's
:18:53. > :18:56.about work. When children bring those different attitudes to the
:18:56. > :19:01.learning situation, then they are going to take very different things
:19:01. > :19:05.from it. Schools have to think hard about how they're going to
:19:05. > :19:07.encourage children to actually see reading as pleasurable and relaxing.
:19:07. > :19:12.There's a lot more in modern society competing for children's
:19:12. > :19:16.time. Probably when you were young, you got a bedtime story read to you
:19:16. > :19:19.regularly. We know that parents now will read to their children when
:19:19. > :19:26.they're at nursery. When the children begin in primary one, they
:19:26. > :19:29.will do the reading home work, but they don't actually read to them,
:19:29. > :19:33.they'll dot home work. And the other drop-off point is when the
:19:33. > :19:36.child is about seven or eight and they can read independently and
:19:36. > :19:40.then parents think they don't need to read to their children any more.
:19:40. > :19:45.That is a terrible, terrible punishment for learning to read to
:19:45. > :19:51.not have anyone read to you. When you're seven? Yeah. Seven, is that
:19:51. > :19:56.an important age? If you don't get it by that point, do you have
:19:56. > :19:59.problems? No, children tend to be independent readers by seven, eight.
:19:59. > :20:03.That's the point where parents will drop off and stop reading to the
:20:03. > :20:07.child. That's really important because reading, if you take even
:20:07. > :20:11.the average book written for a seven-year-old or eight-year-old
:20:11. > :20:15.child it will contain more rare words and multisyllable words than
:20:15. > :20:20.the conversational speech of a university professor. The only
:20:20. > :20:26.thing that beats a novel written for an eight-year-old in terms of
:20:26. > :20:31.complicated vocabulary is expert testimony of a witness in court. L
:20:31. > :20:32.Conversational speech of a university professor. Thanks very
:20:32. > :20:39.university professor. Thanks very much indeed. Quick look at the
:20:39. > :20:44.front pages: The Sun, there it is, all the front pages about
:20:44. > :20:49.Hillsborough, the disaster and the inquiry. 23 years after
:20:49. > :20:54.Hillsborough, the real truth, cops smeared. The Sun is profoundly
:20:54. > :20:59.sorry for false reports. The scotsman, today the truth, tomorrow
:20:59. > :21:09.justice. Hillsborough families call for prosecutions as police cover up