Rosie Wrighting

Eighteen months ago, my constituents in Kettering chose to elect a 26-year-old as their MP. I believe they did so because they wanted a Labour Government, but also because young people in my constituency, and their parents and grandparents, wanted me to speak of my own experience of how tough it has been for my generation. One of the tasks we navigate as MPs is how best to use our privileged position in this building to influence change. As often one of the only young people in the Chamber, and almost always the only young woman—[Interruption.] Okay, depending on what we define as young. [Interruption.] Okay, let me say as one of the only women in their 20s in this Chamber, I try to share the perspective of a younger person. I often felt that that was missing in debates when I watched politics as I was growing up. I shall share that perspective in this debate using my own experience, and in doing so I hope to highlight the generational inequalities that have turned into deep-felt frustration—a frustration that made me join a political party, that made me campaign for a change in Government and that drives me in this place every single day. I declare the fact that I have a plan 2 student loan close to £90,000. Before getting elected to this place, I was working full time for years, just watching my student loan grow. In Kettering, I grew up in a single-parent household. My mum, who is a youth worker, raised me by herself. At school, like so many others, I struggled to work out what I wanted to do and what I wanted my career path to look like. What I knew more than anything else was that I wanted to work hard enough to give myself a better life. It was so clearly communicated to me at school that that route to a better life was going to university. On reflection, I wish someone had spoken to me about apprenticeships and other options. In the desire that many young people have to build themselves a better life, I and people around me did the things that we were told to do: we worked hard, we went to uni, and we got a degree. There is a lot said about what Gen Z expect from life, but ordinary hope and ordinary aspiration, despite what social media tells us, is not to live in Dubai, or to buy avocados and an iced matcha every day; it is to live in a home that we are not worried we will be kicked out of.