Peter Swallow

I welcome the point. I will do my hon. Friend one better: I think that that should be the job of every single Minister. The Government’s role is to deliver for people up and down this country, and we have a particular duty to deliver for our young people. Sometimes it is their voices that are the most forgotten. I recognise that the UK Youth Parliament scheme always has room for improvement. It is certainly disappointing that not every area is represented in the Youth Parliament and that not all local areas engage evenly with the scheme. To coin a phrase, I want to see youth opportunity and youth engagement in every postcode. I have also heard concerns that it is not diverse enough and that it engages only those most likely to participate already. In fact, on that measure the Youth Parliament is far outperforming this Parliament, its older sibling. It is a far more representative body than we are. About 52% of the previous UKYP intake were women, compared with 41% of MPs; 40% had an ethnic minority background, compared with 14% of us; and 9% came from the most disadvantaged 10% of areas, according to the index of multiple deprivation, with roughly 51% coming from postcodes ranked in the most deprived half of IMD deciles. There is always more work to be done, but we would do well to take note of the UK Youth Parliament’s success in electing a rich and diverse group of representatives. I also think it is important to stress that although the programme’s most visible success might be the annual debate in the House, where young people stand up and debate so eloquently, there are many local successes that we should remember as well. We have already spoken about many of those here today. All those successes, both locally and nationally, come at a cost, but in departmental terms—certainly in Government terms—they are extremely small and extremely good value. The last full two-year funding commitment given by DCMS came to only £750,000. I hope colleagues will appreciate that I have tried to avoid too many clichés about young people. From a man of my age they are, in the words of young people, “cringe”. But I do want to indulge a little bit now with some final thoughts, not from myself but from Kingsley, our current MYP for Bracknell Forest. He put it so much better than I ever could hope to, saying that “investing in UKYP is investing in young people, our communities and the future of our democracy”.