“Awwwright, my luvver?” Josh McTaggart and Lydia Cheyne (right), Procedures Group representatives for the South West, opened this year’s Annual Sitting with some classic South West tradition. Dressed as farmhands, the two worked the crowd up while the Wurzels played into the hall.
After welcoming the 300+ Members of Youth Parliament to Exeter University, Josh and Lydia began by introducing the Procedures Group; two representatives from each region of the United Kingdom that run the UK Youth Parliament. The crowd competed ferociously to give their regional rep the loudest cheers!
The planned speaker, Ben Bradshaw, was nowhere to be seen, so Andy Hamflett began his keynote speech with a west-country “Arrrrr” (above) and a video summary of the last year at UKYP. It gave a brief overview of the elections, campaigns, V volunteering events, and of course the House of Lords debate.
After the video ended to applause, Ben Bradshaw arrived a little late, and was ushered swiftly into his keynote. He spoke for little more than 4 minutes, telling the Youth Parliament about Exeter’s fantastic bars and nightclubs, then took questions.
Katriona Mather (left) asked Bradshaw, in his capacity as Health Minister, for the Government’s stance on compulsory sex and relationships education, in the face of a recent study in teenage pregnancy rates showing a sharp rise. He said he was not aware of the latest increase, and that Labour’s current policies had been decreasing teenage pregnancy rates for years now. Bradshaw asked for the study to be sent to him for examination.
Other questions included “Why do asthma sufferers not get their medication free on the NHS?”. Bradshaw explained this by saying that there is simply not enough money to fund everything, so things have to be prioritised. He later likened this to the difference between England and Scotland’s healthcare after a question about devolution, pointing out that although Scots get free parking and free prescriptions, in England waiting lists are half the length.
There was also much discussion of the “credit crunch”, and Bradshaw feverishly defended Gordon Brown’s recent Government borrowing strategies, saying that these things had to be done in difficult times and it would not cause a significant problem later on. He stated that there would categorically not be a recession, but refused to say when he thought the “credit crunch” would be over.
Before leaving, Bradshaw explained his lateness: “And I’m sorry for being late, but you chose to hold your conference on the top of the highest hill in Exeter and it took a little while to get up on my bike!”
Up next was the second half of Andy Hamflett’s speech. He congratulated the Members of Youth Parliament on a great year, and reminded them of the results of a consultation done on the future of UKYP. The three main outcomes of that were: 1) Reach out to more young people, 2) More media coverage of our work and 3) More international work. On the first point, Hamflett showed in statistics the tremendous growth of the organisation. He revealed that the Commons Speaker had been talking to senior MPs about allowing the UKYP into the House of Commons to debate, after the successful House of Lords event.
Regarding media coverage, he explained that the UK Youth Parliament gets a huge deal of coverage in the media, and particularly in the last year has featured on both the front cover of the Times and in the Comment pages of the Guardian - over 200 press mentions a month. Hamflett also announced that the UKYP and its partner organisations were now the official young people’s voices for the country in the EU.
After Gail Lucas explained the rules, regulations and procedures for the event, the MYPs left to an ice-breaking session - the Big Picnic. This was a chance to meet MYPs from other regions and shout a lot to get to know each other, over some lovely local cream teas and scones.
