Policy Roundup July-August edition

We wrote to the candidates in the Tory leadership race, urging them to prioritise young people!

The Conservative party are electing their new leader, and our new Prime Minister and we wrote to the two remaining candidates left in the race, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, urging them to prioritise young people in their agenda. UK Youth are calling for the next Prime Minister to prioritise young people, giving them hope and opportunities to thrive by:

1. Prioritise developing a long term cross Govt strategy and vision for young people
2. Appointing a Minister for Youth who will drive and champion this strategy across Government
3. Ensure all young people have access to trusted adults and opportunities through providing additional investment to the National Youth Guarantee
4. Listen and involve young people on key decisions

To hear more about the final two candidates, check out The Guardian’s ‘Today in Focus’ podcast here

What have young people been saying?

International youth day celebrations: Molly Taylor shares her experience at Downing Street!

“Being a young person from a low-income background made it challenging for me to dream, but it was even more challenging to recognise my capacity to do so.

If I had to look back on my time at Downing Street, 10 Downing Street wouldn’t have been the primary focus. Listening and getting to know the incredible other young people there, whom I had never met before, were the highlights. They helped me see the world differently and taught me that you must follow your dreams if you want to succeed.

But it wasn’t even about success, it was about using their lived experience to prevent and help others from experiencing the same. I realised at that point that I had earned my place there because I had also experienced it and had been devoting my time to addressing it. So, if you’re working toward a dream, keep going; it doesn’t matter if it succeeds; what matters is that you’re working toward it.”

What’s on the horizon?

UK Youth are heading to Party Conferences this Autumn and we’re taking young people with us!

UK Youth will be hosting two panel events across both the Labour and Conservative party conferences this Autumn. The key themes we will be discussing are mental health and employability. We will be joined by a group of young people from across our network, all who have lived experiences of these issues and have been closely connected to our work.

Our Labour panel event will be titled: ‘Standing stronger together to re-imagine a fairer society for young people’ will be a discussion to identify how we work together to re-imagine a fairer society so that all young people are able to thrive and contribute at every stage of their lives, addressing key themes including poverty, mental health and employment. This discussion will explore the unfair reality faced by many young people today and what needs to be done to ensure we achieve better outcomes for all young people.

Our Conservative panel will be titled: ‘Does investing in youth work have real economic value?’. This will be a lively panel debate to discuss the impact of youth work, addressing key themes including poverty, mental health and employment. This discussion will explore the unfair reality faced by many young people today and what needs to be done to ensure we achieve better outcomes for all young people.

Please get in touch by emailing shreena.mistry@ukyouth.org with any feedback you have on the content of our roundup, as well as any ideas/reflections you’d like to share to feed into our policy and public affairs work!