CONTENTS

  1.  Background—The UK Youth Parliament is a directly elected, national body. Members of Youth Parliament (MYPs) are 50% female, 26% from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups and 7% identify themselves as having a disability.

  2.  Evidence—UK Youth Parliament (UKYP) and local authority partners empower and enable traditionally marginalised groups of young people to stand as representatives. Evidence as to why young people think the UK Youth Parliament has better diversity levels than the House of Commons.

  3.  Youth activism—Young people are interested in politics/campaigning/activism. 559,855 young people voted in the most recent UK Youth Parliament elections.

  4.  "Traditional" politics—A UK Youth Parliament consultation of 5,000 young people does show that many young people feel alienated from adult politicians and the traditional understanding of politics. 22% of young people surveyed said that "politicians do not talk about what young people want" and 24% said that they "don't feel they understand politics".

  5.  The Youth Democracy Infrastructure—The UK Youth Parliament's work sits atop and is supported by the broader youth democracy network across the country, which has its own successes and faces its own challenges.

  6.  MYPs—Future MPs? Survey of MYPs shows 65% would consider standing as an MP in the future. This figure is lower for MYPs who are female, or from a BME background, or who have a disability. They consider a number of issues as being barriers to their becoming an MP in later life.

  7.  Younger MPs—Members of Youth Parliament think that young people should be better represented in Parliament. 89% think it is important to have more MPs under the age of 30 elected to Parliament.

  8.  Conclusion—The UK Youth Parliament requests that there is a special session to hear from young people and take their voices into account on this issue.

1.  Background

  1.1  The UK Youth Parliament is a directly elected, national body made up of 627 Members of Youth Parliament (MYPs). They are elected to represent young people throughout the UK on issues that matter to them.

  1.2  The UK Youth Parliament is a major partnership project, supported and led by the charity, its Local Authority partners, many types of decision maker across the country and young people themselves.

  1.3  Elections take place each year and each Local Authority represents a constituency. MYPs are elected on, and work on, issue based campaigns, not party political platforms and lines.

  1.4  MYPs are 50% female, 26% from Black and Minority Ethnic groups and 7% identify themselves as having a disability.

  1.5  MYPs come from and represent many communities. The programme of activity that UKYP and Local Authority partners support also helps young people to develop themselves and become leaders. As one MYP put it recently, "I was a rebel before. I was excluded from school a few times and stuff like that. UKYP made me realise I had this talent. I didn't know I had it before."

2.  Evidence

  2.1  The UK Youth Parliament and local authority partners successfully empower and enable young females, young people from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds and young people with a disability to stand as candidates for the UK Youth Parliament and, once elected, go on to represent young people in their areas.

  2.2  To do so, the UK Youth Parliament is dependent on good community development, the commitment to equality by local workers and money being spent in an area to support marginalised young people. Equal participation for marginalised, or hard to reach young people, inevitably requires more resources, both financial and staff support.

  2.3  Many formal representative structures (including "adult" local democracy fora) could and should learn more from the creative ways in which young people are supported to be decision makers. Some of the principles and ways of working in the youth sector could help to revitalise tired structures elsewhere. Many Democratic Services divisions, for example, struggle to attract adults to decision-making and power-sharing meetings, or to run those meetings in vibrant or engaging ways. At the very same time, in the very same Town Halls or community centres, youth councils or youth fora may be running fantastically engaging sessions with young people—run by young people, tackling packed agendas in creative ways, and constantly evaluating and improving practice.

  2.4  In a recent survey, Members of Youth Parliament attributed the UK Youth Parliament's diversity levels to a number of key factors.

The "openminded" attitudes of young people—"Young people are generally much less judgmental and more liberal than older people. Perhaps that is a stereotype but in my experience at the UK Youth Parliament the MYPs are very open minded."

The UK Youth Parliament as a modern organisation—"I think UK Youth Parliament is a new and fresh organisation, the next generation I guess, where there are no barriers between what gender or race you are or whether you are disabled or not, because its all about the views of young people."

The UK Youth Parliament as apolitical—"We do not vote based on any sort of historical affiliation, and also young people recognise that a vote should be mainly issue-based."

Self selection as candidates ie no selection panels—"[The UK Youth Parliament has better diversity] because we are elected by our peers not a selection panel"

Ease of involvement—"For us young people UKYP is not a career, its an extracurricular activity, and it is very easy to get involved but to get into the House of Commons you need money, contacts and a lot of support. I think a lot of people from minorities can't see themselves getting anywhere with politics so they don't want to give up their jobs to pursue it. Also UKYP is advertised as something for everyone and it is approachable and accessible."

3.  Youth activism

  3.1  The UK Youth Parliament demonstrates that young people are interested in politics, campaigning and activism. 559,855 young people voted to elect their MYPs in 2008. Leeds LEA had a 61% turnout for the UK Youth Parliament elections—higher than average adult turnout for recent general and local elections. Many more local authorities had similarly impressive turnouts.

  3.2  UK Youth Parliament elections use innovative and exciting ways to raise the profile of democracy and participation in local authorities. A large part of the success of the elections comes about because so many young people are involved in their design and implementation, ably supported by the skills and enthusiasm of their youth workers.

  3.3  Many Local Authorities work incredibly hard and creatively to enable hard to reach young people to participate. Some examples include adapting ballot papers using symbols and pictures, providing pre-paid envelopes for ballot papers for young people not in education, employment or training, designing publicity material in different languages and enlisting the support of external agencies to advice on working with young people with special needs.

  3.4  Local authorities vary in the funds they have available to organise UK Youth Parliament elections but each election, whether large or small, enables young people to have their voices heard and demonstrates that young people are interested in politics.

  3.5  Aside from elections, the UK Youth Parliament engages with young people in many other ways through the website, campaigns, petitions, and direct action. The website has 150,000 unique visitors each month and over 6,000 forum postings from young people. A recent campaign collected the views of 22,000 young people. Over 1,500 positive press placements are generated every year, and we facilitate a wide range of national and regional events aimed at attracting ever more young people to this work.

  3.6  What is key to this engagement is that it is youth led and young people are given the support to develop themselves and work in empowering settings to find their own voice. There are no party lines to follow. The young people we work with are simply supported to build their confidence and interact with other young people where they live so that they can represent them and their views. Good youth work runs through the heart of this process.

4.  "Traditional" politics

  4.1  A UK Youth Parliament consultation of 5,000 young people in 2008 showed that many young people feel alienated from adult politicians and the traditional understanding of politics. 22% of young people surveyed said that: "politicians do not talk about what young people want" and 24% said that they: "don't feel they understand politics".

  4.2  Democratic engagement has a major image problem. The UK Youth Parliament has rich information on the barriers to broader participation young people themselves encounter as they try to inspire more young people to get involved and make a difference.

5.  The Youth Democracy Infrastructure

  5.1  The work and successes of the UK Youth Parliament sits at the heart of a national infrastructure which—in the main—runs through Local Authorities everywhere. The areas with the best support and integrated strategies tend to be best at attracting the largest numbers and the most diverse groups of young people.

  5.2  Where this works best, it unites strategic understanding and support of youth democracy at the highest levels (including senior staff, elected members and Members of Parliament), proper budgets to support activity and good planning cycles to ensure a strategic approach to outreach. All come together to send out a coherent message that young people are wanted to help address and take forward shared issues in the community.

However, in many parts of the country, this work is not without its challenges. Local Authority youth workers, for example, often share frustrations at the barriers to participation, which can include:

Lack of understanding of the importance of youth engagement—or the active blocking of it—from senior leaders.

Lack of adequate resources to enable proper activity.

Difficulty in engaging schools in elections, other youth democracy events, etc—even when all the resources are in place.

  5.2  Youth democracy projects need greater support to move to the next level. A strategic approach will be needed to make that happen. Government Departments need to do much more—and work with voluntary sector partners in doing so—to join up their activity in co-ordinated and strategic ways. For example, the following agendas often work in isolation and—both on strategic levels and on the front line—are nowhere near as joined up as they should be:

The Department for Communities and Local Government's Empowerment agenda.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families' Youth Leadership agenda.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families' Pupil Wellbeing agenda (which in part focuses on supporting young people to engage in local decision-making processes).

The Ministry of Justice's Citizen Engagement strategy.

There are ways to join up disparate yet linked themes (for example, the cross-cutting Talent and Enterprise Task Force, with whom we have been working to progress the understanding of leadership as a talent).

  5.3.  Care must also be taken to ensure an equal platform is being developed across the UK. It is clear, for example, that there is a lack of support for cross-border initiatives (including UK Youth Parliament) to support young leaders from England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to engage with each other on an equal footing.

6.  MYPs—Future MPs?

  6.1  According to a recent survey, 65% of MYPs would consider standing as an MP in the future. This is incredibly positive, but there is a real danger that young people who are inspired to get engaged in their teens are then "lost" when they become too old to engage or receive support. Organisations like the UK Youth Parliament and others could be supported to develop alumni networks and encourage ongoing engagement with other structures.

  6.2  The percentage of MYPs who would consider standing as an MP in the future falls when filtered by gender, BME background or race.

59% of female MYPs would consider standing as an MP in the future

57% of MYPs from a BME background would consider standing as an MP in the future

42% of female MYPs from a BME background would consider standing as an MP in the future.

18% of MYPs with a disability would consider standing as an MP in the future

  6.3  When asked, MYPs said they saw a number of barriers to their becoming, or wishing to become, an MP in later life. "I'm mainly unsure because I don't think that it would be a place or situation that I would feel comfortable with. I don't really feel suited to the whole "Parliament scene" if that makes any sense…! It is partly to do with the fact that I'm female, and mixed heritage and I haven't seen any role model types in Parliament for me, therefore it has not been a career I have often considered"

  Many felt they did not "know enough" about politics to become an MP. "I am not taught enough about politics at school. I watch the news and read newspapers, however I feel I have barely scratched the surface when it comes to political subjects."

  6.4  Members of Youth Parliament feel a number of measures could be taken to encourage MPs from the diversity groups listed.

A publicity and advertising campaign to encourage traditionally marginalised groups to stand—"[We need] to advertise and promote it as a campaign".

More high profile MPs/Ministers from the diversity groups listed—"I think we need people in high positions in the government who are also in these groups, people like the Home Secretary Jaqcui Smith, this way we can show and encourage those who need reassurance that it doesn't matter who you are or what race you are or whether your disabled or not, because as long as you are confident and have a view and want to become an MP then it is possible."

Shortlists—"Organisations such as the UK Youth Parliament demonstrate that women are electable. 20% female MPs simply isn't acceptable in 2009. If nothing is done to correct this clearly unjust imbalance, drastic action such as all women shortlists, or a minimum quota on the number of women in Cabinet will soon be our only options."

Education—"We need to create more programmes to nurture talented youths from a more diverse range of backgrounds (for instance, by giving them the chance to meet with MPs, visit the Houses of Parliament, work with local councils much in the way UKYP does) could help provide the much needed aspiration and proof that it is an attainable goal for them. In the same way, a better, and most importantly MORE RELEVANT politics education within the PSHE curriculum could be useful too, in showing HOW politics is for everyone."

Some MYPs simply felt that change would come about in time—"I feel it will naturally happen with our more open-minded generation growing up" and did not feel shortlists were key to success—"[We need to] promote participation in politics more to society as a whole. Positive discrimination would not be something to go for."

7.  Younger MPs

  7.1  87% of the MYPs surveyed said they felt it was important there were more MPs elected under the age of 30. "I think it is very important to have young MPs, I want to be a young MP, we are the next generation and it would make politics more fresh and vibrant, it'll give young people actual role models, not just old people in smart suits to look up to." "Young people make up a very large percentage of the UK's population and this needs to be reflected by having young MPs in Westminster."

8.  Conclusion

  8.1  The UK Youth Parliament requests a special session during the Speaker's Conference to take young people's voices, experiences and creative suggestions into account on this issue.

"It is important to have widespread range of gender, age, ability and views in order to best represent society, and to come to the right decision."