Scottish Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Scottish Youth Parliament, HC 492
Monday 5 February 2024
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 5 February 2024.
Members present: Pete Wishart (Chair); Alan Brown; Wendy Chamberlain; David Duguid; Sally-Ann Hart; Christine Jardine; Mark Menzies; Ms Anum Qaisar; Douglas Ross; Michael Shanks.
Questions 1-51
Witnesses
I: Olivia Brown, MSYP for Midlothian North and Musselburgh, and SYP Trustee; Ellie Craig, MSYP for Glasgow Cathcart, and Vice-Chair of the SYP; Ewan Knight, MSYP for Scouts Scotland, and Deputy Convener of the Sport and Leisure Committee; Mollie McGoran, MSYP for Inverness and Nairn, and Chair of the SYP; Abbie Wright, MSYP for Aberdeen Central, and SYP Trustee.
Witnesses: Olivia Brown, Ellie Craig, Ewan Knight, Mollie McGoran and Abbie Wright.
Q1 Chair: Welcome to the Scottish Affairs Committee’s special session with colleagues from the Youth Parliament of Scotland. We are thrilled and delighted that you are able to join us; I am sure that this is going to be a very interesting session. I believe it is the first time that colleagues from the Youth Parliament of Scotland have come to a Select Committee at Westminster. You are welcome in that regard. I hope we find this a useful session, and I hope that you guys find it useful too.
To kick things off, the first question—for us dopey Westminster MPs who probably do not spend too long looking at briefs—is for Mollie, who is Chair of the Scottish Youth Parliament. Can you talk a little about the history of the Youth Parliament, how it came to be and the type of work that you generally do? Just give us a background, please.
Mollie McGoran: Of course. First, I just want to say thank you so much for having us here. As you have touched on already, this is the first time that we have given evidence to a Westminster Committee, so thank you for giving us this opportunity. We greatly appreciate it.
To give a very broad summary, the SYP is the democratically elected voice of Scotland’s young people, with around 160 MSYPs representing 32 local authorities and 10 national voluntary organisations. The Scottish Youth Parliament was formed in 1999, one day before the Scottish Parliament, by a group of youth workers and young people. Since then, we have had nine CEOs, 80 national sittings, thousands of MSYPs and, including me, 21 Chairs.
SYP is a rights-based organisation. We were founded on the principle of article 12 of the UNCRC: children and young people have the right to be listened to and taken seriously on issues that affect them. This underpins everything we do. Our mission is to provide a national platform for young people to discuss the issues that are important to them and campaign for the changes to the nation that they want to see. We support our Members in their work by training them, upskilling their personal development and empowering them, using a youth work ethos.
We are also a youth-led organisation, with our deputies, conveners, board—we have some of them here—and Chairs all being young people. We are probably the biggest youth-led charity in Scotland. That is a lot to digest, so I will give you a minute.
Q2 Chair: I know that you will tell us more about the work that you do. You represent all the Scottish parliamentary constituencies. Are there contests—elections—to be an MSYP?
Mollie McGoran: Yes. We are just coming to the end of our two-year election cycle. Every one of our MSYPs represents their constituency; I represent Inverness and Nairn. We have all 32 local authorities in Scotland represented, along with 10 national voluntary organisations, like the Scouts, the Girl Guides and Haggeye, which is part of the RNIB charity. All of those have representatives to bring different issues to the Scottish Youth Parliament.
The elections are democratically run, through every single local authority, by their counterparts in the youth work sector. We have election co-ordinators that take the heid. We are just coming to the end, so as of 31 January we have approved our new membership, which is very exciting.
Q3 Chair: Are the positions keenly contested?
Mollie McGoran: Yes, very contested. Glasgow, which is obviously a very big area, usually has quite a few areas that are very contested—there have probably been up to 10 candidates for one seat, which is quite a lot—but in some other, more rural places you would be lucky to have a contested election.
Q4 Chair: Are your constituents—the people who are eligible to vote in the different constituencies—your membership?
Mollie McGoran: Our membership is made up of the MSYPs—the ones that have been voted in. Any young person in Scotland between the ages of 12 and 25 can vote—just like for Parliament—for their representative. We represent young people aged 12 to 25, but our Members are 14 to 25, to make it a bit fairer.
Q5 Chair: Why on earth would you want to do this?
Mollie McGoran: We have got some answers to that!
Chair: A few of us have been here for quite a long time, and we ask ourselves that question every single day. We are in an election year this year and we’re all thinking, “Jeez, we’re going to go through all this again.” You have had your contest, but what is it that gets you up in the morning and saying, “I’m going to be a youth parliamentarian”? I will come to some of your colleagues if that’s all right, Mollie. Abbie, maybe you could help us with that one. What makes you want to do this?
Abbie Wright: My key thing was having young people’s voices listened to, because I think that quite often young people cannot be included in the decisions that are made, when actually sometimes they are the people that are going to be most affected by them. My key thing was making sure that young people’s voices are heard by decision makers in all sorts of areas.
Q6 Chair: Do you not think that we do that for you, as Members of Parliament?
Abbie Wright: You are definitely doing it today by speaking to us, but I think that often adults can have louder voices than young people, and it’s important that young people’s voices are also represented.
Q7 Chair: Excellent. Olivia, what about you? What has got you into this?
Olivia Brown: I got involved in SYP in a slightly more unconventional way, in that I wasn’t told about it by a teacher or anything; I just googled ways for young people to get involved in politics that don’t involve parties, because I wasn’t interested in that. Youth parliaments are one of the very few opportunities that we as young people have to get involved in politics that does not involve party politics.
Doing my exams throughout the pandemic really highlighted to me that young people’s voices are not always listened to when it most matters and are not always listened to on the decisions that most impact them, so I stood for SYP. I’m still here, which is great: I was re-elected last week. I am really grateful that I have been able to create change in areas that I really care about, like sexual education and fast fashion.
Q8 Chair: I will come to you now, Ellie, and maybe you can help me with this one. Would your ambition be getting to the other side of this horseshoe? When you think about joining the Youth Parliament, is this part of your thinking about it: “I’d like to do this for a living”?
Ellie Craig: I don’t think that it was something that I really thought about when I first stood to be an MSYP in 2019. I was 15, so I don’t think I had really thought much about what I wanted to do when I left school. But what this has showed me is that there are actually a wealth of opportunities to get into political careers that do not involve standing to be a politician. The third sector in Scotland is really vibrant. I have found a passion for children’s rights in doing my work in SYP, and that is something that I really want to get into.
Similarly to Abbie and Olivia, I think that young people don’t have as much of a voice as they need to on issues that they care about. Through SYP, we have opportunities, like our annual meeting with the Scottish Cabinet, to bring up issues that we care about. For example, I talked about bereavement support in our meeting last year. Seeing the change that can be created in meetings like that, when young people are invited into decision-making spaces, was really inspirational. I think that working in something like that area in the future would be something that I would want to continue doing.
Q9 Chair: Ewan, I am going to ask you what got you into all this, but also this question. Everybody here is talking about securing an effective voice to be championing the issues and agenda of young people. Do you think you do that effectively?
Ewan Knight: I am the MSYP for Scouts Scotland. Unlike my colleagues—these guys are MSYPs for constituencies—I am one of the representatives of a national voluntary organisation.
Being a Scout influenced me so much. We have these values, and we have a lot of things in common with the SYP, but I wanted to share more, so it felt like the logical step. I spoke to my modern studies teacher—so thank you, modern studies teachers.
Chair: He did declare that interest before you came in!
Ewan Knight: Yes, I must say that I knew Michael before he came into this new career as well.
I think we represent young people well. Being an MSYP has its challenges—like any age demographic, I am sure, not everyone is interested in politics—but I’ll tell you what: young people definitely have a real, keen interest. As Abbie said, it is about trying to be as loud as our older counterparts, in the nicest way. I think we do well. There are lots of challenges, but I am sure we will get on to those.
Q10 Chair: We are going to come on to all that, but let me come to you, Mollie, as Chair. This is fantastic; it is great for us to hear what motivates people to get into politics at a very early stage. We have read a bit about your work, which is great—it is fascinating—but how do you design your agenda? What issues come to the top that you want to take up? I know that you steer away from certain things, which unfortunately we can never do—the constitution and the hard party political stuff—but how do you design your agenda on a day-to-day and year-to-year basis?
Mollie McGoran: Do you know what? I think that perfectly illustrates something that you touched on earlier about whether we represent the voice of Scotland’s young people. All of our agenda comes from the voice of Scotland’s young people. Every five years, we design a manifesto that has been consulted on—the last one was with 70,000 young people or something like that. A lot of young people have put their thoughts into this agenda and have voted on the issues that they find the most pressing and the most important—maybe ones from seldom-heard groups that would not usually be picked up by the majority of people. We condense them into a big manifesto that outlines our work for the next five years.
We also have Committees that redesign their work plan every two years. They are roughly split up like Scottish Parliament Committees and work on very similar topics. They will look at new issues every year to make sure that we are evolving with what young people want to see.
Chair: Thank you for that. I will hand over to Michael Shanks.
Q11 Michael Shanks: I appreciate that you all said “older” rather than “old” when you were talking about us. Thank you—that means a lot.
Picking up on what you said, Ewan, why do you think it is so important—I am asking the question although I sort of know the answer—that young people have this voice?
Ewan Knight: At the end of the day, young people are the experts on being young people. There is no time like the present. We have said this already: all of us in this room have had experience of being a young person, but we need to remember that we are the young people right now. The political decisions that you make will impact us now and in the future.
Young people make policy stronger. Education policy is the obvious example; it cannot be made well without the input of young people, because at the end of the day who is going to be affected by it the most? It is going to be young people, through school, through university and throughout their life.
It is not just short-term decisions; it is also the long term. The climate crisis is a huge issue for young people. We will be in our 40s when we reach the net zero targets for Scotland and the UK. We have a long way to go. We will see the result of the decisions we make now for most of our life, so it is very important that we are involved—not just us, but all young people.
Q12 Michael Shanks: It is a really interesting point that your lived experience is not our lived experience. As much as we might gather evidence about things, we are not living it in the same way as you. Are there any barriers to getting that point across to decision makers? You have spoken passionately today, but you are not quite yet in positions where you can make decisions. What are the barriers to your getting us to change our mind on things?
Ewan Knight: There are a lot of barriers for young people engaging in politics. Something important to note is that 32% of 18 to 34-year-old Scots are not registered to vote. That is quite a lot compared with the 8%, I think, of over-65s in Scotland that are not registered to vote. It is a scary difference.
Young people are not all the same, but there are trends that we can put together and use to solve this. Westminster is not the most accessible place for young people. I don’t have any friends that have been here before at all—apart from my SYP friends, but we are properly involved with politics, whereas most of my friends are not. The same could be said about Holyrood: I don’t have any friends that have been there, apart from on a school trip. It’s one of those things: if you’ve not been there, you don’t feel involved. We have been on a tour today, and it does give you a sense of what democracy is and how important it is.
Q13 Chair: What did you make of what you saw today? Were you impressed with what you observed?
Ewan Knight: Yes. Obviously, you see so much of it on TV, on the news. It is an interesting contrast with Holyrood. They both have amazing benefits, modern and traditional. I quite like tradition; I think it is quite fascinating, as long as it is practical, which I would say it is.
On the topic of seeing things in the media, the culture of politics—I am sure we can all agree on this—is that a lot of the time it is shown as being quite angry and hostile. I am sure you probably do have friends across the political spectrum, but you don’t see that coming through on TV. And why would a young person want to be involved in that? Why would you want to put yourself in a position where you are being shouted at and argued with? You put things on social media—I am sure you all get it on your accounts.
Chair: Douglas Ross has a supplementary. We will come back to you in a minute, Michael.
Q14 Douglas Ross: On that point, we had a proposal from the Scottish Government to consult on reducing the age for MSPs so that you could stand at 16. Having looked at that consultation, they have now dropped those plans.
Do you think that the Scottish Youth Parliament is the best way, so that it does not have the same adversarial attitude that might put someone off if they get in at 16 and then do not have longevity, or would you support reducing the age for people to stand for the Scottish Parliament, as was originally consulted on?
Ewan Knight: That is a really good question. I ran a consultation workshop with our membership on electoral reform, and that was the main proposal. There was a lot in the proposal that the Scottish Government made but, as you can imagine, the SYP took a real interest in that. The results we got from that—I do not have the figures here, but it wasn’t definite for anything. There were a lot of concerns from young people that there would not be the right safeguards in place for young people. That actually surprised me; I thought our MSYPs would be quite pro it, but it is very varied. I honestly don’t know where I stand on it, but I believe the Youth Parliament does not have a stance on it.
Douglas Ross: Anyone else?
Mollie McGoran: Yes, we don’t have a stance on that as of yet, apart from the work that happened in the consultation workshop. What I will say is that I completely agree with Ewan that politics is very divisive for young people at the moment. Some of the work that we have been doing since I and Ellie took over as Chair and Vice-Chair has been looking particularly into women’s experiences and black and ethnic minority MSYPs’ experiences of being in the Youth Parliament and of engaging with decision makers and their constituents, and how they feel it is different being a young person from a seldom-heard background.
Being a young woman is very different from the experience of another person in the same shoes. We have done a lot of work in the last two years on this, and one of the overall reflections is that there is an additional barrier for young people who come from more seldom-heard backgrounds. I think the same would apply when standing to be an MSP. Perhaps it would even be significantly heightened.
Chair: I think Anum has a question on that issue.
Q15 Ms Qaisar: Thank you, Mollie—I was going to come to this later, but thank you for bringing it up now. How diverse is the Scottish Youth Parliament? What barriers do you think are in place that are stopping people from ethnic minority groups or other minority groups from entering it? What work could be done by yourselves or by us?
We have been so committed to implementing a very intense structure for our diversity and inclusion work—one that will evolve with time. We have implemented the women’s empowerment programme, which I currently lead on. We have conducted research with our Members about women’s experiences, written a report, and drafted recommendations for future boards to take on and implement. The same has happened with my colleague Crisantos. He heads up “The Movement”, which is the same thing for black and ethnic minority young people, looking into their experiences, and recommendations from a report will go to future boards.
I am so happy with our diversity stats. I have done a lot of work, in my time as Chair, to make sure that we reach out to all of Scotland’s young people. It is not fair that we get to sit here and reflect the voice of only some; as the democratically elected voice of Scotland’s young people, we need to be democratic and to represent everyone.
One of the stats that I am proudest of is that we are one of the gayest Parliaments. We have great representation from the LGBT community. I think that a majority of us are now women or those from minority gender identities. I can’t remember the stats on diversity of—anyway, I can come back to you. I have got a lot.
Chair: We will give you a chance to think about that one, because Anum will be asking more about that later.
Q16 Michael Shanks: A couple of you mentioned the issue of politics being divisive. Ellie, I think you mentioned trying to get involved in something that didn’t have party politics. Have you any reflections for us about how your decision making might be more productive than our decision making? When you are coming to decisions about things, do you still fall out with one another—do you still argue? You are all getting along very well today, but is that always the case?
Ellie Craig: We have a policymaking process. Olivia would be better placed to touch on how we create policy, but it is done through debates. Like any other group of people, young people don’t always agree on every single issue. Young people have the opportunity to submit policy motions and then consult to make sure that a majority of young people support that view.
As a charity, we are a politically impartial organisation. That gives us the opportunity to work with politicians from across the political spectrum, and we do so on issues that young people care about. We think that that is a more effective way to create change, because, as you were saying, there can be more productive conversations.
Obviously we don’t always agree, but there are issues—young people have voiced them and they are in our manifesto and our campaigns, which you will hear more about later—that young people passionately care about. We want to create a space that can give young people the chance to voice those issues in the most productive way possible.
Q17 Michael Shanks: This is the last question in this section, and it is for any of you. How prepared do you think you are, whether through school or other organisations, to participate in the political space? Do you think you are supported in that? Do you think you get help with that?
Ellie Craig: Citizenship education that prepares young people to engage in politics is quite inconsistent across Scotland. A lot of that happens through subjects like modern studies, which is really inconsistent in terms of accessibility; a lot of it is about whether you have a teacher who can teach it at every level. I studied advanced higher modern studies at the Glasgow Caledonian hub, which is jointly funded by the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council. Because of recent budget cuts, that is going to be shut down next year, but I wouldn’t have got the opportunity to study modern studies at advanced higher level—which has helped me at university—had it not been for that hub.
I also think that pupil voice structures in schools are a really good way to teach young people how to be engaged citizens. In a lot of places, that doesn’t exist: we have heard from young people across Scotland that there isn’t that pupil voice. It might rely on a passionate teacher to set one up, and a lot of it may be quite tokenistic.
I think that young people learn by lived experience—by doing. If we give young people opportunities to be engaged political citizens from a young age, they will carry that lived experience into the rest of their lives.
Michael Shanks: That is a brilliant answer, Ellie. Thank you.
Chair: It is indeed; thank you for that.
Q18 Christine Jardine: I will continue on that theme. A few years ago now, I spoke to the Scottish Youth Parliament and met various people who went on to become involved in politics as advisers for the political parties. One of them actually went on to become our chief press officer here in London. Thinking about what Michael was saying, do you see this as part of a preparation for not necessarily being involved in politics but having more of an appreciation? Do you think that lots of your colleagues in the Parliament see it as a stage in a career progression?
Ellie Craig: I think that young people have a variety of different experiences in SYP and what they get out of it is really different. For me, I learned a lot about children’s rights and the UNCRC, which is something I am really passionate about and want to continue working on. We have had MSYPs go on to study medicine and loads of different career paths, but what it does give you is that knowledge of how political change is created and what spaces you have to be in to get the right changes made.
That knowledge of political spaces can prepare you for any career, and it is really important because a lot of young people don’t understand even how the civil service and its different levels work, like the policy teams or people who advise the politicians—the people behind what you see on Parliament TV. That knowledge can be really useful for any career, but another massive sector that SYP prepares young people to get into is youth work. SYP is a youth work organisation. All of our staff team are youth workers, and so young people want to go on and inspire the next generation of young people to get into these spaces like we have. That is a massive thing that we maybe undersell.
Mollie McGoran: There is a very big misconception that we are a bit of a gateway to Parliament and Government, whereas most young people are getting involved around a specific issue rather than wanting to get into politics. I don’t really know many people involved with us who want to specifically get into politics or stood because of that. It is a bit of a misconception. One of the things that we do pride ourselves on, though, is upskilling young people. We are not training people to go and become politicians. We are trying to develop their citizenship, their public speaking and their confidence. Confidence is a huge one. We are trying to let young people know that they can take up spaces in these important areas, and make sure that they have the ability and tools to go forward and become confident citizens.
Q19 David Duguid: On what you were talking about there, Mollie, a thought has been rattling around in my head for the last five or 10 minutes about the whole idea of learning life skills—character building, I guess we would have called it once upon a time. It reminds me of what I often hear from people your age who have come through armed forces cadets; they may not have necessarily gone on to join the armed forces but it has been a valuable experience. Taking the politics—or the democratic structure—out of it, is there a certain element of developing life skills that you get out of doing this? I see lots of nodding heads.
Mollie McGoran: Yes, I would definitely say so. Obviously I can’t speak to the experience of any cadets as I don’t have any of that experience at all, but what we are trying to implement is a community where people feel safe to learn and grow. I have been an MSYP for five years and I am definitely not the same person as when I started. I won’t shut up, for one—I keep talking! I am so confident. I have developed all these life skills and made amazing friends.
There is that element of upskilling and life skills, but giving people a safe, comfortable space to support them in learning those skills for themselves is a priority for us too. We train all our MSYPs on different issues. One of our big things is political impartiality. They learn how to structure a debate, how to make a policy with us, how to consult with constituents and how to talk to MPs. They are learning those skills automatically through lots of different training.
Olivia Brown: On the point about youth work, it is really underappreciated as a way for young people to access their rights. What you see in front of you here is a product of youth work. We have been able to flourish in SYP, our education and our social lives because we had access to extracurricular opportunities as kids. That is not just SYP but sports, youth clubs, musical theatre and so on. The youth work sector is currently being subjected to really crippling cuts. Not only are climate change, the cost of living and the mental health epidemic functioning as barriers to young people accessing their rights, but now young people also do not have access to the same opportunities we had, which have led us here.
Mollie McGoran: Spend on youth work is preventive spend for all those issues.
Q20 David Duguid: I want to ask one other question, based on what has been said so far. I am fascinated by this idea of the youth of today, shall we say, having—I am being very careful how I word this, because we often feel, as—
Chair: Careful here!
David Duguid As mature or advanced in years, or whatever you want to call us—older—members of society—
Christine Jardine: “Codgers” is the word you are looking for, David.
David Duguid: It often feels as if people like yourselves—your cohort—think that we just don’t get it, or even worse, that we just don’t care. Now, that kind of bothers me sometimes. Not only do I care about what happens to you guys, but I care passionately about what happens to my own children and what their future will be like. Is it more the case that the experiences you guys have gone through in the last 20 years are so different from the experiences we would have gone through in our first 20 years, and that the world is changing that much faster as we all get older?
Mollie McGoran: It definitely feels a little bit like that sometimes when speaking to certain young people, but I think it is a frustration, rather than anything else, at repeatedly not being listened to and not having our voices heard in these situations. We are only just now coming to a point where youth participation in co-design of services for young people is being standardised. That would not have happened in your first 20 years, but I am very glad that it is happening now.
David Duguid: Back in my day! Could just speak up, my dear? [Laughter.]
Mollie McGoran: I’m so sorry! This always happens, every single time we talk about young people; it gets flipped on us.
Ellie Craig: On Mollie’s final point, young people maybe feel that they are not being listened to because they are not being asked in the right way. That brings me on to The Right Way project we ran, which was funded by the Scottish Government’s children’s rights unit. We created The Right Way hub, which has a bunch of resources designed by a group of Members of the Scottish Youth Parliament, based on our experience of participation within political spaces. We created this resource called “AIM The Right Way”, which is basically a checklist guide for anyone wanting to consult young people. It was created for officials and decision makers, but it has been used at all levels of decision making. I use it when I plan a participation process. It basically sets out how participation should be designed to be accessible, inclusive and meaningful, and it is kind of based around Laura Lundy’s model of youth participation, to make sure that all elements are there.
Young people are often asked what they think, but then they do not have any influence on the change and get brought in only at the end of the participation process. Equipping politicians and decision makers with the knowledge of how to actually create safe, inclusive and meaningful participation spaces will be really key to understanding what young people actually need.
Q21 Christine Jardine: A lot of the stuff you covered there is important, and it is also very informative for us, but do we better help the Scottish Youth Parliament by talking to you more and inviting you to things like this more, or—I am thinking about what you said about divisiveness and shouting at people; perhaps we do not always behave very well in Parliament—do we do you more of a service by leaving you alone to develop a different way of doing things and them come to Holyrood or here when you want to, rather than when we want to pick up on it? Is it best to let you develop things, or to support you in a way that might be perceived as interfering?
Mollie McGoran: There is definitely a balance to it. We usually get asked to consult our young people on issues that Parliament is bringing up, rather than to bring to Parliament the issues that we want to bring to Parliament. That is one of the big things. I think Ellie or Olivia touched earlier on our Cabinet meetings. We have the opportunity to bring the issues affecting young people directly to that highest level in the Scottish Government, which we feel is really valuable.
Q22 Christine Jardine: Do we need to improve the mechanism for that?
Mollie McGoran: We are in the process of improving the way that we engage with the Scottish Government and Parliament and how we change that cycle to get the most out of it. In engaging with decision makers, it is very different depending on who you engage with. Things like this are absolutely amazing for getting us to speak directly to all of you, but there is maybe an element of not leaving us alone, but giving us the safe space to shout about it.
Christine Jardine: Giving you the space to develop it.
Mollie McGoran: Yes.
Christine Jardine: Thank you.
Q23 Ms Qaisar: On the matter of divisiveness, I do not want you to leave here thinking we all hate each other. I will quickly share a story with you. I am the SNP MP for Airdrie and Shotts. Shortly after I was elected I ended up having a conversation with Naz Shah, the Labour MP for Bradford West, who was incredibly kind and considerate and was really open to talking to me about her experiences here in Parliament. Naz has become a really good friend of mine. After that day, she sent a message to Sayeeda Warsi, a Conservative peer in the House of Lords, who has also taken me under her wing. So the three of us have become really good friends. I am an SNP MP, one is a Labour MP and one is a Conservative peer in the House of Lords. We don’t all hate each other, so please don’t think that when you leave here.
I am interested to learn a bit more about the campaigns that the Parliament is focused on and whether it has adopted any views on them.
Olivia Brown: I could give you a whistle-stop tour of how we develop our campaigns. I am proud to say that SYP has a really robust policymaking process, which we have touched on already. MSYPs present motions at our national sittings and then MSYPs vote on whether to put those into official policy or not. The motions as well as the votes are informed by consultation. We then develop a manifesto every five years, and from that manifesto young people vote on what they think our national priority and campaigns should be.
We have had loads of really successful ones. We had UNCRC incorporation most recently, which we will hopefully talk about at some point today, but also votes at 16, equal marriage and free bus travel for under-22s. We bring those issues to Cabinet and the executives in the Scottish Government. These opportunities provide a really important platform for us as representatives to share the views of our peers directly with some of the most powerful people in the country. It gives it so much more legitimacy when every single aspect of those campaigns is based on consultation with young people.
I don’t know if you want to say anything on the UNCRC—
Q24 Ms Qaisar: I was just going to come to that. Could you tell us a little bit more, please?
Ellie Craig: Yes, I can kick us off on the UNCRC. It will not be a surprise to hear that that has been a massive thing that we have been campaigning for, specifically on incorporation to ensure that rights are upheld, protected and respected. I will reflect on how Scotland got to where it was with incorporation to see where we can go next.
Scotland began its journey to incorporation alongside the rest of the UK with the ratification of the UNCRC in 1991. In 2004 we established the Scottish Children and Young People’s Commissioner, whose role is to champion children and young people’s rights. The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 put the UNCRC into Scottish legislation for the first time, but there was still a long way to go to incorporation.
The appetite for incorporation grew in Scotland, and in the Year of Young People in 2018 we ran a campaign called “Right Here, Right Now” in which we furthered the call for this. It was supported by lots of other organisations in Scotland, like Together and the Children’s Parliament. The campaign saw success when the Scottish Government committed to incorporation in 2018-19 in their programme for government. That led to the Scottish Parliament unanimously passing the UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill for the first time in 2020.
After legal challenges, a revised Bill received Royal Assent last month. This success was celebrated by children and young people across Scotland who had campaigned tirelessly for incorporation, some of whom are now adults. The protections of the Bill will be a huge step forward for children and young people in Scotland, particularly those whose rights are most at risk. The legal protection that this provides means that public bodies are held to account and required to report on how they are upholding children and young people’s rights.
All of the culture around rights in Scotland has changed with incorporation. What is really important is the legal backing and how that helps to make culture change a reality. It grounds a culture of respecting children and young people’s rights into our practice and process. It is the difference between being required to do something and being asked to do it: for example, when you are given a one-line Whip, your attendance is required but, when you are given a three-line Whip, it is essential. We need children’s rights to be essential.
The next crucial step we need to take, then, is providing this protection to children and young people across the UK, with the UK Parliament committing to incorporating the UNCRC on a nationwide scale. As I said earlier, the very first young people and children who worked on incorporation campaigns are now adults. We do not want children in the UK to age out of the UNCRC before we take action to protect their rights in law at a UK level. Olivia can talk more about implementation of the UNCRC and how that creates culture as well.
Olivia Brown: That was a very good summary of all the legalities. I think it is important to remember that you do not need a UNCRC incorporation Act to begin promoting a rights-based culture in the UK.
As mentioned, the UK ratified the UNCRC years ago, so there is an obligation to promote this culture. The UN committee on the rights of the child recently said some rather scathing things about our approach to children’s rights in this country. It stated that it was concerned about the fact that the best interests of the child and children, and young people’s views, are not systematically taken into account in decision making here in the UK. There is also a lack of understanding of the UNCRC among children and adults alike.
I think it is fair to say that we do not have a massively positive attitude to children and young people currently. I saw this during exams. In Scotland, exam results were decided based on your postcode initially, and young people were outraged to the extent that some of them felt the need to protest. Upon their return to school, there was no mental health support whatever in that transition; we are still seeing the ramifications of that.
The reality is that rights are not abstract concepts to be regarded; they are and should be tools to empower young people, but right now in the UK they are at the mercy of those who choose to uphold them. Therefore, we rely on a culture change. We rely on comprehensive education in our schools so that children understand what their rights are and what they entitled to and can identify when breaches are taking place.
Adults also need this education so that they can better protect young people. From decision makers such as yourselves, communication around rights needs to be accessible to us so we know exactly where our country stands. Incorporation is the goal of the journey, but rights change and culture change are the start of that journey.
Q25 Michael Shanks: I want to ask a question on that point about culture change. Ellie, you gave a good summary; I was a director of Together about ten years ago and we were talking about UNCRC incorporation then, so it has been a long time coming. But it was about how we move beyond. Someone earlier talked about tokenism—how do we go from you just being in the room where decisions are being made but without being consulted to co-producing things together with you at the heart of those decisions?
Olivia Brown: I think it is the meaningful participation of young people; that is what we talk about in our “Right Way” project—the fact that young people need to be involved in decisions from start to end. I think that in everything you do, especially as MPs, you should be questioning whether it is in the best interests of the child because that is how we get the UNCRC to go from a piece of legislation to the reality that we live. It is about embodying it in everything we do in society.
Q26 Douglas Ross: You were all nodding your heads when covid and its implications were discussed. Both Parliaments and Governments are looking at lessons learned. Hopefully it never happens again, but if there is another pandemic and you were to speak to your counterparts in 10, 20 or 50 years’ time, what would you tell them about how you felt as young people—part of the UK, part of Scotland—during the pandemic?
How were you treated? What could have been done differently or should be done differently? What did your Members feel at that time about the way schooling operated, and how did the Youth Parliament adapt to not being able to get together and have these discussions? Obviously, that is a lot of what you do. How did you change what you were doing?
Mollie McGoran: I can start on how we adapted and someone else can come in later. We have our three national sittings a year. Most of the work we do is in person so, like everyone else, we had to adapt. We had a very engaged membership before the start of the pandemic. It was very near impossible to continue our work with young people going through mental health crises and possibly the loss of a family member or to engage with our membership and continue with our work. However, what we decided to do instead—I was a board member at the time—was to put all our focus on support for our Members, while continuing our work in the background with those who had capacity to do so.
One of the really amazing things that we did was we had a session every week for about nine weeks where we would all get together and do something fun. We would all go on a Zoom call, and we did yoga, we baked—we did all this random stuff to take everyone’s mind off it.
Since coming out of the pandemic, we have been able to evolve the way the Youth Parliament works to have hybrid meetings. I myself am from the highlands, and I am not able to get to everything. Our island MSYPs have been severely impacted since covid by not being able to participate properly. That has made us more conscious of making sure that all the things we do are the most accessible to our Members.
Ellie Craig: A massive issue that young people highlighted to us throughout the pandemic, and since, has been education. As Olivia touched on earlier, the exam results in 2020 highlighted a problem with our education structures in that we do not listen to young people enough. Education reform discussions have been something that we have played an active role in. In the pandemic, we had an MSYP sit on the covid education recovery group and the national qualifications group, so we have been taking young people’s views to those top, high-level strategic discussions on these things.
We played a role in the Louise Hayward review of education reform and also in the national discussion, really making sure that young people’s voices were highlighted throughout that. The pandemic started that conversation about education reform; what we need to do now is finish it. Young people have said time and again what they want from their education and what they do not want, and we need to really listen. The pandemic was a learning opportunity for everyone, including young people.
Q27 Douglas Ross: Abbie, you are the Convener of the Sport and Leisure Committee. Away from the education side, how do you think extracurricular activities were affected by the pandemic? Are we back to normal now, or is there still more that we need to do in that area?
Abbie Wright: Yes, definitely. Unfortunately, extracurricular activities were some of the first things to be put to the side, particularly by schools, which is where a lot of people access extracurricular activities. That might be playing in the school netball or basketball club on a Tuesday night after school. That is still an extracurricular activity, and schools very much focused on education throughout the pandemic.
In saying that, I do think that some of our voluntary organisations did a fantastic job of trying to keep going during the pandemic. I do a lot of work with Girlguiding, and a lot of our units moved to virtual meetings. We would have virtual meetings each week where we would try to do the same kind of activities that we would be doing to have a bit of a sense of normality for our young Members. I know that a lot of other organisations also did that.
Coming out of the pandemic, I know that our membership numbers are still lower than they were before. We lost a lot of volunteers over the pandemic as well. There is a natural turnover of volunteers normally, but during the pandemic, we did not have as many volunteers coming in as we would normally have. That is because people were looking at what opportunities they could get involved in, and youth work is not one you would think of when we are in the middle of a lockdown, because you would probably think that that happens in person.
While our activities are now very much back to normal in some respects, we are still low on numbers, which means the number of young people getting to access these extracurricular activities and national voluntary organisations is still a lot lower than it was pre-pandemic. That is something we really need to think about because, actually, these young people would probably benefit from it more, because they had such big disruption in their lives before.
Q28 Douglas Ross: Could I follow on from Anum’s questions about your priorities? We have spoken about the national priorities, but I was looking at some of your local priorities for being elected.
Olivia, I noticed you were looking at involving young people in flood protection scheme planning, which did not immediately register with me as something that young people would really be passionate about. Obviously, there are local issues, and we have spoken about national issues. How do you decide the local issues you really want to focus on, and how did planning for flood alleviation schemes come up?
Olivia Brown: The flood protection scheme in Musselburgh is so controversial. It has been debated for years, and millions of pounds have been spent on it. There was quite a big vote in the council last week, so it is really heating up, but there just has not been much involvement of young people in it.
When it comes to local priorities, it depends on all our individual areas, but once again a lot of it is drawn from our experiences as young people. Some of my other priorities are PSE reform—I think sex ed in schools is abysmal right now in Scotland—and exam reform, as we have said.
That is drawn from my experience as a young person and, as I said, I was re-elected on those priorities last week, so I am really excited to get going. But a flood protection scheme will be an intense one; I will have to do a lot of reading.
Q29 Douglas Ross: Mollie, I sit in the Scottish Parliament as well representing part of the same area that you do. Infrastructure is really important—A9/A96. Is that an issue you also raised in the Scottish Youth Parliament?
Mollie McGoran: I knew you were going to say that; I could feel it. Actually, it is not something that comes up very much, because there are only six of us who represent the Highlands and the big issue that I have been campaigning on in my tenure in the SYP, or when I was just a grassroots MSYP as opposed to a board member, was free bus travel for under-22s. As you only get two years generally and four at most, it is very rare in your tenure as an MSYP to have something that you are able to see through—something that you have campaigned for, from start to finish. I felt so privileged to be able to be there and do that, from the start of our campaigning to using that free bus travel every single day.
Another of the big issues that comes up in rural areas that I have put a motion forward on and presented to the membership in the past is about skills education and things like that, including tying skills education into rural curriculum-building and making sure that the young people in our areas have the tools they need to be able to go into the workforce.
I was one of five people in my year who went to university; it’s not for everyone. And I want to make sure that the other young people in my area have the skills to be able to get the most of what they want out of the workforce.
Q30 Douglas Ross: Finally, following on from Mollie’s point about seeing things through, Ewan, you are very interested in promoting outdoor education. In the Scottish Parliament, one of my colleagues, Liz Smith, has a private Member’s Bill on that. The Welsh Parliament is looking at it, and I think that Tim Farron has been doing some work here in the UK Parliament. It must be reassuring that an issue that you are raising in the Youth Parliament is being looked at in Parliaments across the UK. Are you encouraged by that?
Ewan Knight: Yes, definitely. It is really encouraging that I have the opportunity. At Scouts Scotland, we have a staff member involved in the group with that Bill and I believe that we—myself and my other Scouts Scotland MSYP colleague—are planning on trying to get involved with that, as well. It is really encouraging, as Mollie was just saying, to see something go through. I am really confident that this could work. And it is nice.
Again, we have been saying that it’s frustrating being a young person trying to engage with politics, but, as you said, when you have these opportunities and these things going through, it is a real positive note and it does make you go, “This is worth it, actually. We are getting there.”
Q31 Chair: I am just wondering what influence you have. Obviously, you have got agency and democratic legitimacy. If you ask to see Scottish Government Ministers, for example, or officials, or seek to speak to MSPs, do you generally get these requests complied with? Do you get to see people? What I am really asking is this: you have all these brilliant suggestions and proposals, but do you get them in front of people who actually make the decisions about these things?
Mollie McGoran: I would say generally yes. In the past, there have been difficulties in engaging with specific decision makers, but in general I would say that our young people are well equipped and have the ability to get in front of the people who make the decisions. They are not always decision makers in Parliament or in a Government; it is sometimes other people. For the under-22 bus travel, I was working very heavily with Transport Scotland.
Q32 Chair: Without naming names, would there be certain Ministers, MSPs and officials who you would probably have lot better opportunities and chances of getting your agendas in front of?
Mollie McGoran: I wouldn’t say so. We are a politically impartial organisation, for the reason that we want to be able to work with everyone. We don’t want our Members to face any sort of problems when they want to engage with any representative or public body, so we need to make sure that we are as welcoming as we would hope other people are to us.
Ellie Craig: Just to add to Mollie’s point, I think the difficulties come from building those relationships and showing decision makers that young people do have the skills to be in those spaces. We’re really lucky that we do our annual takeover of the Scottish Cabinet; I think the first one took place in 2018. That is a more recent development.
Chair: We are going to come specifically to that. I know that colleagues have questions on that, but, before we move on, I know that you wanted to come in on this, Wendy.
Q33 Wendy Chamberlain: Apologies for being late; I was in the Chamber and came along afterwards. What I have been hearing since I have been here is that there is great engagement with Government, Parliament and civil society, but, when you were talking about skills—the importance of skills and the impact of education—I was thinking about one of the things that we always hear from employers, which is that young people don’t have the skills that they need.
I would be really interested to hear what engagement you are having with employers. Are we having the right conversations to ensure that the skills that young people want to have are what employers need? I am happy to hear from whoever is best to respond.
Mollie McGoran: That is perhaps something that we are maybe missing out on or omitting—talking directly to employers. However, our focus is on providing those skills rather than connecting the dots between the young person and the employer, if that makes much sense.
Wendy Chamberlain: Yes, definitely.
Mollie McGoran: I think that one thing that we do do very well is being able to support young people to make those connections themselves. To give them the ability of networking is definitely a gift—to be able to form those relationships for themselves. But that is definitely something to take away, actually.
Olivia Brown: I think that there is a point there, though, around barriers, because a lot of young people are lacking in skills in certain areas. A lot of the time, that is not because we don’t want those skills; it is just because, if our school doesn’t offer that Higher, or if we don’t have that bus route, we’re not going to be able to access that. That definitely is a point where linking up employers and young people, and working to understand how we can address those barriers, can be really valuable.
Wendy Chamberlain: I am just conscious that at results time every year, we all use the hashtag “#NoWrongPath”, but, actually, surely it is better that we get people on to the right path sooner? I’m having at home the same column discussion in terms of school choices at the moment, so I feel that pain. Thank you.
Q34 David Duguid: I actually wanted to follow on from Douglas Ross’s question, because I wanted to ask pretty much the same question about how you prioritise on local issues, but I will maybe change the question slightly. Obviously, you do not organise yourselves along party lines, but do you organise yourselves geographically?
For example, if I remember correctly, Abbie, I think you’re Aberdeen, and Mollie, you’re Highlands and Islands, aren’t you? So, central belt, basically—sorry to lump you in all together there. And Ewan, you’re lucky; you represent all of Scotland. If you’re not arguing with each other over party lines, is there a sort of rural-urban divide, or do you organise yourselves in some kind of way where you can focus on those priorities?
Mollie McGoran: Funnily enough, not really. One of the ways that we do—we never tend to get divisive like socially or along certain issues, but I think that one of the ways that we do divide up is while talking about different Committees. I think that that is the only kind of divisiveness we have—trying to prioritise which Committee you want to join. But it’s never—we hardly ever have—
Q35 David Duguid: It doesn’t sound like divisiveness. It sounds like everyone’s got different priorities and focus areas—so just like this place. You would choose to be on different Select Committees, for example, based on your interests.
Mollie McGoran: Yes. Each MSYP gets to join one Committee and they stay there for a year.
Ellie Craig: And for our campaigns, we open sort of campaign groups, and young people can join them, but that is open to everyone from across Scotland. Obviously, we work in partnership with local authorities and national voluntary organisations, but a lot of local areas have things like youth councils and different youth voice structures, and that does differ a lot across Scotland.
In terms of grouping together geographically, because a lot of change then would maybe happen at a Glasgow level or Glasgow City Council level, it is kind of up to the MSYPs who are in that local area to group together, outwith our national stuff, to campaign on those issues, if that makes sense.
Q36 David Duguid: Olivia or Abbie, do you have anything to add to that?
Olivia Brown: On the point around divisiveness, there is a lack of it in the Scottish Youth Parliament, and I think that that is down to the fact that everything is based on consultation with young people. We understand that we are representatives of our constituents first and foremost, so we vote in accordance with our constituents. If I personally don’t agree with one of our policies, but 90% of young people surveyed do, then I understand that that is the priority because we are here as representatives of young people first and foremost.
Abbie Wright: I think there is an understanding within the SYP that everybody comes from different backgrounds and every young person has different experiences. As you said, I come from Aberdeen, and my experience is very different from that of a young person who lives on the Isle of Skye. I accept that difference, but that doesn’t mean I can’t support what other young people are experiencing.
One thing we are really good at is accepting that every young person has their own experience of being a young person, and that everybody’s view is valid. We need to represent everybody’s views within the SYP.
Chair: I am conscious of time. Alan Brown is going to ask a couple of questions, and Mark and Wendy want to come in. I know you guys need to get out at half-past, so hopefully we will get through all that.
Q37 Alan Brown: I will start with you, Mollie. We have already heard about some successful campaigns that have led to policy being implemented, such as free bus travel for under-22s. Could you elaborate a wee bit more on the ways you seek to influence decision makers and take campaigns or policies to the next level of implementation?
Mollie McGoran: I can use an example from our current campaigning on climate, which we have not touched on yet. We have been campaigning on climate-related issues for so long, including sustainable transport, fast fashion, the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill and single-use plastics, and I have already touched on the success of free bus travel.
One campaign that we are currently looking into is fast fashion, which is an issue that is generally less considered within the climate sphere. One fact that demonstrates the gravity of the situation is that there are currently enough textiles on Earth to clothe the next six generations of people, which is a bit scary to me. It is appalling, and it is a key example of where the Scottish and UK Governments need to work together. The fast fashion industry is global and is closely tied to international trade, so collaborative working is the only way to ensure that rights are upheld in this situation. Could you remind me of the question?
Q38 Alan Brown: Basically, how do you attempt to influence decision makers? You have policies and campaigns, but what are your different techniques?
Mollie McGoran: That’s it—I know I picked that example for a reason. One of the ways we were influencing in relation to fast fashion, because it is not an issue that is currently on the parliamentary agenda, is that we hosted a panel on fast fashion at one of our sittings, which Olivia chaired. We brought in experts from across the industries, representing various viewpoints, to speak to our Members about fast fashion, the circular economy and how we can make positive change. In the end, we all got in touch with our decision makers and people who are able to hold companies to account, which is the big issue. Olivia, do you want to talk a bit about fast fashion?
Olivia Brown: Fast fashion is one of my passions, if I can put it that way. I stopped buying from fast fashion stores two years ago. It goes back to the point about human rights. There is a horrific climate impact, but the people who work in sweatshops, which are typically out in the east, although sweatshops have been discovered in Britain recently, don’t get fair hours. Some companies allow their workers one day off per month. Usually, they have to make 90 garments in a day, and if they don’t hit that goal, they stay late. It is such a horrific issue, and it is criminally ignored. It deeply impacts young people because we are one of the biggest consumers of fast fashion but we are also one of the groups that is most educated about it, paradoxically.
So this just goes back to the fact that it needs to be put on the agenda. Once again, it is not our fault as the consumers when fast fashion is essentially the only accessible choice for young people. It is about holding those companies to account and about the Government waking up to the massive crisis that is ongoing.
Mollie McGoran: That ties in nicely with a point that we are consistently campaigning for: there should be more climate education embedded within the curriculum. That would allow young people who don’t have the luxury of being MSYPs to expand their knowledge of climate-related issues and use their influence within their schools to encourage them to make decisions.
To circle back to the question, we are also encouraging our MSYPs to get more involved in their local community to make sure that the circle of influence does not end with them—that the other young people in their area feel able to bring issues forward, much like if they were an MSYP. I think our influence definitely varies across the country.
Q39 Alan Brown: Can I return to the successful campaign for free bus travel for under-22s? Have you ever had a role in reviewing the success of a policy once it is implemented? That is key, because getting it over the finish line is only one thing. Unfortunately, as an MP I sometimes get complaints from older people about young people accessing bus travel, and there is a backwards and forwards. It is really important to be able to review a policy and talk about it.
Ellie Craig: We have touched a lot on how we take our policies to key decision makers, and we talked about our annual cabinet meeting. We also have an annual takeover of the executive team at the Scottish Government, including the civil service and the people who are working in policy teams and implementing these policies that we have campaigned tirelessly for. That is a key part of the participation process, and it can sometimes get forgotten. We talk a lot in the SYP about the feedback loop and about closing it. That highlights that participation does not end when you have achieved a policy campaign. You need to continually ask young people about it and do evaluation and monitoring of how it is working. That is something we continue to do afterwards.
Mollie McGoran: Feedback and reviews are almost a more important part of the process. As Olivia said earlier, young people need to be involved in all stages—implementation, co-design and review—of any policies that go forward.
Q40 Alan Brown: Do you think you have enough of a relationship with politicians as part of that review process? Can you keep having a word in their ear?
Mollie McGoran: As Members of the Youth Parliament, yes, but young people generally probably do not.
Ellie Craig: That is why the design and participation processes are really important. The project we worked on is all about the UNCRC and how article 12 should be implemented. That means not just asking young people but continuing to include them in the implementation.
Q41 Alan Brown: Olivia, you said at the start that you wanted to get involved in politics in a way that did not involve political parties. Now you are further down the line, has it reinforced your view about keeping away from political parties?
Olivia Brown: We are a politically impartial organisation. It probably would not be appropriate for me to comment on that.
Alan Brown: I know you are politically impartial, but looking ahead—
Q42 Chair: This is really interesting. I know Alan has put pressure on this point, but how can you be involved in a whole range of political issues and disregard—maybe that is not the right word—or ignore or set aside the political questions?
Mollie McGoran: It is actually easier than you think. It does not really play a lot into the work we do. You would think it would be a bigger part, but it is really not a big issue. We support each other.
Chair: Gosh, I wish you could teach us.
Olivia Brown: It highlights how we have more in common than divides us. I would argue that political parties are almost completely irrelevant to our work. It does not interfere at all. We enjoy working with politicians from across the Parliament.
Ellie Craig: It is about us taking forward the lived experience of young people and the issues we care about. We are not trying to make political statements. We are trying to highlight the lived experience of young people. That is just what we do, so we do not really think about it.
Q43 Alan Brown: Olivia, you talked earlier about covid and the frustration about what you called the postcode lottery. There was the first round of markings, and you said there were protests. As I recall, part of the frustration was that schools generally from more deprived areas were more likely to be marked down in the continuous assessment. You have touched on the whole for-or-against exams issue, but for me it almost stimulated a much wider debate about education and reform of continuous assessment versus exams, or maybe a mix. Was an opportunity lost there, or is there still an opportunity to have a proper debate on that?
Olivia Brown: I think it became an opportunity. As Ellie mentioned, that situation really highlighted the extent to which young people are ignored in that space. The fact that that entire situation happened—granted, the pandemic was such an unpredictable, unique experience that no one was ever going to get all the decision making perfect, but had young people been involved in those decisions around exams, that situation would never have occurred. It is really positive that we are now in conversation with the SQA, Education Scotland and Louise Hayward to actively discuss exam reform. I do not think that is somewhere we would have expected to be 10 years ago.
Q44 Alan Brown: Is there a real appetite for considering reform?
Olivia Brown: Yes.
Q45 Alan Brown: Mollie, you touched on climate change, and clearly climate change is always the big, ongoing issue of the day, as it were. I am conscious that I am sitting here asking this as somebody with grey hair, who is well past middle age and who is male, but what is the general frustration in terms of what I assume you see as a disconnect? Is there real concern about current policies? Obviously, there has been a lively debate recently here in Parliament about oil and gas licensing.
Mollie McGoran: I think the frustrations mainly lie with young people feeling as though not enough change is being made. The UK and Scottish Governments have very different approaches towards climate change, and I think young people in both areas could argue that not enough is being done. One of the things that can sum up how frustrating it feels and the direness of the situation is something that I said at the Festival of Politics when speaking on this exact issue: we are inheriting an earth on fire, and we currently do not have the tools to put it out. I think young people need to be at the heart of this debate. There are lots of different calls around climate change and we need to consult with people to know what to put at the forefront of the priorities, if that makes a bit of sense.
Q46 Alan Brown: Can I just ask Abbie that? I know you have not spoken quite as much.
David Duguid: And you represent Aberdeen.
Abbie Wright: Obviously, the oil and gas industry is a big part of the Aberdeen economy, so a just transition is what we really need to be focusing on at the moment. Looking at the climate emergency is a massive thing, but we also need to ensure that we are sustainable in the future and that people’s livelihoods are protected. At the moment, in Aberdeen, that is quite a big thing with the cuts to the oil and gas sector. It is about how we upskill young people in Aberdeen to take on roles within the new energy system, because we are always going to need to produce energy, as well as just upskilling them for oil and gas, which is maybe what they have been doing for generations.
Chair: We have only five minutes left, but we want to get a photo with you guys before you head out, so don’t rush away.
Q47 Mark Menzies: I have a really quick question for you, Ewan. You have your role as the Deputy Convenor of the Sports and Leisure Committee, and clearly young people interacting with sports is really important, and there has been some phenomenal success. How do you interact or work with some of your big sporting organisations and funding bodies? How do you get the views of young people across, and are you listened to? Could you just give me an example of that?
Ewan Knight: To be honest, it is something that we have struggled with. It is a really difficult question—have you got anything on that, Abbie?
Abbie Wright: We have not necessarily worked directly with any big sporting organisations. There is one thing that we have been really pushing for. Obviously, with the budget cuts that are currently happening, a lot of sports facilities have been shut, so we have been working with local sports bodies around providing support to say that we do not believe that those facilities should be shut. I know that lots of sporting organisations, particularly sportscotland, are looking at ways to bring youth participation into their own programmes, which is ultimately what we want. We want every organisation to include youth participation within its programme.
Q48 Mark Menzies: The reason why I ask is because I represent an English constituency, and I want to try to take away some of things that you have talked about here today as maybe a learning. One of the questions that I had in my head was, on things like sport, for example, how effectively do organisations like Sport England—I single out Sport England, but there are many others—engage with young people to shape programmes that people actually want to do and that can really help them to develop?
To bounce back on to that second bit of my question—bearing in mind that I represent an English constituency—how do you share some of that best practice with the UK Youth Parliament? You must be doing some really good things that could be shared learning, as must the UK Youth Parliament. Who wants to pick that up?
Abbie Wright: We have MSYPs who sit on the UK Youth Parliament, and we are always quite mindful that the UK Youth Parliament works slightly differently from how we do. Both models have advantages and disadvantages, but our MSYPs are able to contribute to the work of the UK Youth Parliament. Ellie, do you want to speak on this?
Ellie Craig: On more widely sharing best practice, we have a number of resources—including, again, The Right Way hub, which we could go on about—that were designed for Scottish Government to use, but we have heard stories of them being used elsewhere. Sharing those resources more widely with people in the UK Youth Parliament and with our colleagues in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is something that we are really passionate about. They can then go and take those to decision makers in different organisations, not even just at a political level, so they can use them.
Mollie McGoran: We also have a really large network of organisations that we work and share best practice with. We are really closely linked with Young Scot and YouthLink, and we meet regularly with all our national volunteer organisations to share what is going on in the sector. I feel like we have really close ties to other people in different sectors and are able to contribute to their work effectively.
Q49 Wendy Chamberlain: Have you used “AIM The Right Way” to increase your engagement? I have to say that I spoke to both my teenagers, who have not engaged with the Youth Parliament, and, considering my role, I find that profoundly depressing.
Ellie Craig: It was completely created out of our lived experience of designing participation processes and the things that we have learned along the way. I definitely use it all the time when designing processes.
Q50 Wendy Chamberlain: Do you see a difference? Has it improved things? All of you talked very passionately about your constituents. Do you think you are engaging with enough of a broad representation of people?
Ellie Craig: Yes, I definitely think it is a really helpful tool. It includes stuff about how to include seldom-heard groups and create a safe space in a youth-led way. Young people are more likely to listen to other young people, and if we go into spaces and local youth clubs, they are more likely to listen to us. I think we do that effectively.
Mollie McGoran: Another part of our role in specifically including seldom-heard groups is our NVO structure. Each of our national volunteer organisations has two MSYPs, but we have started to expand that, so that we can have associate organisations that can bring the views of their young people even if they are not necessarily in the place to support taking on two MSYPs and running national elections.
We have recently engaged with the asylum seekers network, the Scottish Refugee Council and Amina, which is a women’s charity. We are slowly building out those networks. There is also Sistema Scotland, which is our first associate; that is very exciting. This is something that we have done this year. Being able to extend that out is very important.
Q51 Wendy Chamberlain: Abbie, I think you were going to tell me a little about the right to food. I co-chair the APPG on ending the need for food banks. Tell us a bit about your findings.
Abbie Wright: Fantastic. The right to food has been one of our key campaign priorities over the last two years. As part of that, we produced a report on the right to food. We consulted with over 850 young people from across all areas of Scotland and asked them about their experience of accessing their right to food.
One thing that is key to bear in mind is that this topic was chosen prior to the cost of living crisis. Some 1.2 million people in Scotland experienced food insecurity between mid-2021 and mid-2022, and I think we all know that that number is only going to have skyrocketed in the last few months, as the cost of living crisis has really taken hold.
We also have to think about what good food is. Good food should be healthy and nutritious food that can be accessed with dignity and choice. Often a food bank is not actually meeting those criteria. One of the key things was that over 25% of young people we consulted with had used a food bank in the last six months. That was really shocking and was much higher than I thought it was going to be. There is also a stigma associated with asking for help to access food: 47% said that there was a stigma associated with it. So as well as issues in being able to access food, there are also the big stigma problems that need to be addressed.
Chair: I am really sorry, but I was told we have to get you guys out at half-past 4. Thank you ever so much. We were all looking forward to the session, and it has not disappointed. I am thinking about suggesting to colleagues that we try to make this an annual event, and see whether we can get you guys here every year. I am sure that you would be happy about that.
Mollie McGoran: That would be brilliant.
Chair: You could combine that with other visits and things around the House of Commons. I think that would be really helpful. We should try to make sure we communicate this with our colleagues from across Scotland. The Clerks have taken a note of all the questions and responses, which we will share with you, obviously, and more widely among the Scottish MP group.
That was really fantastic; I really enjoyed it. You could tell by the interested, engaged faces of colleagues that we all thoroughly enjoyed the session. Thank you for coming down this afternoon.
Mollie McGoran: Thank you so much for having us.