The next item is a statement by the Llywydd, update on the establishment of a youth parliament for Wales. Llywydd. 

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. My intention this afternoon is to update Members on the election of the first youth parliament for Wales, and particularly to inform Members that next week at the Urdd Eisteddfod we will launching the voter registration campaign for the first youth parliament election. This parliament will give a national democratic voice to the young people of Wales and will enable them to note and raise awareness of the issues that they choose to discuss. 

The registration period will be open to all young people in Wales between the ages of 11 and 18, and will be open from the end of May, which is next week, until mid November. In September of this year, young people will be able to put themselves forward to stand for election. The election, which will be online, will be held over a period of three weeks in November, with the intention of holding the first meeting of the Welsh youth parliament in February 2019.

Sixty youth parliament members will be elected, forty of which will be elected by a first-past-the-post system through an electronic voting system in each of the 40 constituencies in Wales. Twenty of them will be returned by partner organisations to ensure that diverse groups of young people are represented in the parliament.

As far as we are aware, our parliament will be the first youth parliament to democratically elect its representatives at its inaugural election, and that's an incredible achievement.  

I’m sure that every Assembly Member here today will be as eager as I am to ensure that young people in their constituencies and regions are made aware of the exciting opportunities presented by this initiative. A wide range of resources will be made available to you to facilitate the work of promoting and raising awareness in your areas. We do hope that you will promote the parliament from next week onwards.

Many national youth organisations and young people have helped to shape our plans and have agreed to continue to support us on our journey. I want to put on record my heartfelt thanks to them for their ongoing dedication and for sharing their expertise that will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in ensuring the next phase of the project is a success.

Now, the hard work begins. Through our work with schools, colleges, youth groups, representative groups and key individuals, we want to reach as many young people as possible. I am confident that the engagement programme that our education and youth engagement team has developed will inspire young people who face real or perceived barriers to take part in this process.

As a nation committed to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, implementing such an ambitious project is a significant development for us. Article 12 of the convention of the UN on the rights of the child sets out the right of children and young people to express an opinion and for that opinion to be taken into account when decisions are being made on any matter that affects them. 

In the context of our work as a legislature, establishing a youth parliament ensures that we are discharging our duties to the voters of today and tomorrow—to each and every citizen in Wales—and each and every one of them will have a stake in our democracy here in Wales.

Diolch. I have a number of speakers. Can I just ask every speaker if they can just have a short introduction to their question and then we'll see how we go? But there are several speakers who would like to speak on this important issue. Darren Millar. 

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Could I thank the Llywydd for her statement today? She'll recall that it was back in October 2016 that as an opposition party we put forward a debate on the establishment of a youth parliament. I want to pay tribute to colleagues in all parties that have supported this initiative. Indeed, I should also put on record our thanks to the Children's Commissioner for Wales, of course, for the huge role that she has played in helping to persuade all of us of the importance of establishing a youth parliament. I think it was just a few years back when the UN stated that Wales was one of only six nations in the world without a youth parliamentary body, so I think it is an important step that we have taken as a National Assembly, and I'm delighted that you as Llywydd have taken up this important issue and moved the wheels forward so that we are now at this stage where people will be able to register to vote. It is clearly very important that we give children and young people a say in politics and that we engage them in the democratic process, and I think that the education that is going to sit around the youth parliament will certainly help to promote participation in the future.

Can I just ask a few questions? The campaign for the children and young people's assembly, which produced its report 'Assemble for Wales' a number of years ago, said that 92 per cent of young people were in favour of establishing a youth parliament but that 85 per cent of people were also in favour of it having a statutory basis. I wonder whether there might be an opportunity, with the legislation that the Llywydd has indicated may come forward from her office and from the Commission in the future, to give this youth parliament a statutory basis so that we have to have one in law at all times again in the future, because I think that that would give some confidence to young people that we are serious about the way in which we engage with them.

You made reference to 20 partner organisations that are going to help to make sure that we've got a diverse representation on the new youth parliament. Can you tell us what those organisations are? I assume we'll be able to have a list of those so that we can try to engage with them as Assembly Members and encourage people to present themselves as potential candidates for appointment to the youth parliament. Can you also tell us how the youth parliament is going to be resourced? We clearly need to make sure that it's got adequate resources if it's going to be a success. I assume that we, as a National Assembly, through our budgetary processes, have made the necessary resources available for this immediate work, but clearly we need to also make sure that they've got sufficient resources in the future so that, when it's convened, it can convey those messages back to us and other parliamentarians at a UK level too. Thank you.

Thank you, and I'm pleased that all political parties here have supported the development of electing our first senedd ieuenctid—youth parliament. The children's commissioner, as you've said, has been critical in pursuing and advocating for the role of a youth parliament here, and the children's commissioner has worked with us in developing the detail on this, as have many of her young people's networks and young people themselves who work with the children's commissioner in providing us with advice right along this process. 

It's not our intention at this point to give the youth parliament a statutory basis. I'm aware that some are advocating for that, and that's an issue, I think, that we'll look at into the future. But let's start and establish our first youth parliament and not allow the potential of putting it on a statutory basis to delay the establishment of the first youth parliament. We'll keep that under review into the future.

Just to clarify on the 20 additional members to the 40 from constituencies, there will be 10 partner organisations that will elect two each and put forward the names of two members each. It will be for those partner organisations—young people's organisations; they can be national or they can be local—to put their names forward as suggested partner organisations. We will have criteria then to decide who those partner organisations will be for this first youth parliament, and I'm hoping that, between me, the children's commissioner and, hopefully, the Chair of the children's committee here in this Assembly, we can select the 10 most relevant, innovative and representative partner organisations for the first senedd ieuenctid.

Resourced by the National Assembly, by the Commission, a budget has been set aside for that purpose. It is £65,000 for this year and will be £50,000 for non-election years into the future. It is a significant resource for us, but, of course, for young people to take part in an assembly, they will need to be able to travel from the various places throughout Wales where they represent to the Assembly and be properly looked after in that context of being elected members to the very first senedd ieuenctid—youth parliament. 

May I thank the Llywydd for her statement? Clearly, we warmly welcome the fact that this youth parliament is about to come into existence and we will do everything we can to support the efforts to facilitate that and to ensure that it does happen, because this does need to be a tool to empower young people in Wales, as I’m sure it will, and many of us have argued that we do need to empower the voice of young people within democracy.

We as a party have been arguing for bringing down of the voting age to 16. We’ve also argued for strengthening citizenship education in schools through the new curriculum, and this will be another opportunity, I believe, to help raise awareness and provide opportunities for young people to participate. But I’m not happy to stop there. I not only want to see this parliament discussing and developing ideas and proposing policy; I want the influence of this youth parliament to be felt beyond the benches of that parliament—on these benches and elsewhere.

Therefore, I will ask my first question: how do you believe that the youth parliament will be able to feed formally into the proceedings of committees and debates here in this Parliament? Will we see reports produced? Will there be an opportunity for members of the youth parliament to address this Parliament or Assembly committees? I do think we need to formalise these processes in order to truly empower young people in this context.

And the second question that I have is: we are talking about a broad age range, from 11 to 18, and there is a risk, of course, that the voices of the older cohort within that group might drown out the younger voices, so what processes will be in place to ensure fairness and equality, if you like, for the younger children on that spectrum? Thank you. 

Well, I agree entirely with what was set out by Llyr, namely that what we want to achieve here is to empower young people to be able to state their voice clearly on any subject that’s of interest or priority to them. And, so, the question is: what will be the relationship between the youth parliament and our Parliament and the different committees in the Parliament? I think that it’s not me, or everyone here—we won’t have the answers for that, but the young people in the first youth parliament. And I think that, as a matter of principle, we should allow those young people to decide on how they want to influence our policies, how they want to influence our processes, and what kind of engagement work that they want to do with the different committees and the legislation that is going through this place. All I will say is that I hope that we, as Members and committees, and as a Government, will all be open to collaboration and to listening to our young people.

It is an interesting question about whether the younger people will be over-influenced by the older people. My experience from this place—the older Parliament, if I can call it that—is that the younger people aren’t drowned out by the older people in the older age range. I do sense that that won’t be true in the youth parliament as well. I do hope that everyone, from the outset, will be treated equally.

I, too, would like to give a really warm welcome to this statement today. It is really exciting to see the progress that's been made and the scale of the proposals that will enable our young people to have a genuine voice in this new youth parliament. I'd like to thank the Presiding Officer and her team for all their work on it, because I know the scale of the logistics of this has been very challenging, but also to thank the young people up and down Wales who have contributed to bringing this to fruition today. I am really pleased that part of these plans involves proposals to have the young people from the partner organisations, because, as I've said previously, while it's great that we've got young, confident, articulate people in Wales, we have to make sure that this parliament is a voice for all our young people, including our most disadvantaged, and I'd be very honoured to play a part in that. 

I've just got a few questions. The first is: for young people who are out there now thinking, 'Well, is this something that I should be putting my name in for?', what avenues are there for them to get further information and to ask those questions that they may need in order to take an informed decision on it? I'm also assuming that, just as we have excellent opportunities for training and professional development, there'll be things put in place for the young people who are successful to support them in doing this very new and important job. I would associate myself with Llyr's comments about the need to look further and beyond this to embed the role of young people as far as we can in our practices here, and I'd be grateful for your assurance that that's something that you'll keep under review. 

And just finally to say: would you agree with me that it is incumbent on all of us now in this institution to do everything that we can to promote this initiative and to ensure that as many young people both sign up to vote and consider standing for this new institution that will genuinely finally give young people a voice in Wales?

Thanks for your co-operation to date on this and the role that your committee has played, also, in advocating for this development. Thank you also for recognising the scale of what we have in front of us. This is an electronic register with an electronic vote for all 11 to 18-year-olds in Wales, and therefore the logistics of this is a significant venture for us as an Assembly. We need the support of all Assembly Members here to be part of the promotional activity around the registration to vote, and then hopefully inspiring young people as we come across them, or know of them, or partner organisations in our constituencies and regions, to be developing this idea in their areas so we become advocates for this in our various areas.

Our outreach work—our educational programme—is now geared up to working with schools, colleges and young people's organisations throughout Wales to be promoting the opportunities that are becoming available. But on the point that you make, Lynne, in terms of there will always be young articulate people in all our constituencies and regions who will see this and grab it and want to go for it straight away, we want this assembly—this young people's assembly and parliament—to be representative of all. Therefore, the 10 partner organisations that elect under-represented young people—people who don't traditionally have an obvious channel to find their way into this kind of opportunity—that we enable those young people to be elected to the first young parliament here in Wales.

Then, of course, when they're elected, 11 to 18-year-olds—young parliamentarians—do need to be supported in their work. That work will be in this Chamber. The intention at this point is to have three meetings over a two-year period in this Chamber, but that's not all the work that a young parliamentarian will be involved in. Much of that will be regionally working with other regionally elected Members, reporting back to young people in their areas and discussing policies with young people in their areas, and they will need to be supported in that work. So, very much of the focus of the educational and outreach work that this Assembly has done in the past that we're familiar with will now be prioritising the work of supporting the 60 young parliamentarians, but also their relationship with younger people more widely in their communities.

So, is it important that, as a result of this statement today, and the opening up of the registration as of next week, all of us become champions of the new youth parliament in Wales and hope that many people register and many people get interested in becoming members.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd, a diolch, Llywydd, for your statement today. You mentioned that there has been cross-party support for the idea of the youth parliament in the past and that, indeed, remains the case. UKIP continues to be supportive of the idea. You recognise that there are many challenges and issues facing young people in Wales today, and having a regular channel of communication between the Assembly on the one hand and a kind of youth wing of the Assembly on the other can be no bad thing. Now, I appreciate that we have had previous youth fora like Funky Dragon, which did carry out some valuable work, but which didn't strictly constitute a youth parliament, so we are heading towards something new.

I was going to ask you, Llywydd, how you see the youth parliament taking shape in the future, but, of course, you did make the point earlier that one of the things you want is the parliament itself—the senedd ieuenctid, to give it its alternative name—you want that body to itself make the suggestion of how they see their role, going forward, which I think is a very good idea. So, that may limit you in what you can say on this point, but if you do have any more clarity of your own on how you envision the youth parliament going forward, that would be interesting for us to hear today.

You also mentioned the importance of diversity, which is something we also have to bear in mind, and you mentioned, I believe, an engagement programme. So, if you have any more to tell us about the engagement programme, that would also be useful.

We do have something that's about to take place on the equalities and local government committee, which is an inquiry into disengagement from politics of various groups. I believe that one of the themes we are addressing is a general theme of disengagement from politics of the young, which was a suggestion that initially came from Jack Sargeant, whom I notice is here, so he may well expand on this. But I just wondered if our inquiry may actually help in the work you're doing with developing the senedd ieuenctid. So, I await further developments. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you for the support of UKIP for the establishment of the senedd ieuenctid and for the issues that you've identified there, and in particular the issue about the relationship between the youth parliament and our Parliament. As I said earlier, it is for the youth parliament to decide on its own priorities and its own ways of working and how it wants that relationship to happen. But I think the important point in terms of committees, this Chamber and Government as well, is that when you are undertaking work where you want the views of young people, or wish to have the views of young people, you make the offer to the youth parliament to discuss, and they may decide, 'Oh no, we're not interested in that at all and we don't want to offer any view into that. We have a different priority', at least the channels of communication are open on both sides. But it will be for the youth parliament to decide on its own priorities.

The fact that the committee you sit on is doing that work on disengagement of the young in the political process is an interesting coincidence of timing and I'm sure that the young people who'll be elected to this first youth parliament will be interested in sharing their views. They are probably the engaged young people, but they will know of many around them who are not as engaged as they are. So, I hope that it's a two-way process between the youth parliament and this Parliament on how we influence each other, and especially how young people get to have a direct influence on the legislation and the policy and the debates that we hold here in this Assembly.

Thank you. Jack Sargeant.

Diolch, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I start by thanking the Llywydd for bringing forward this truly important statement today? And thank you, Gareth, just briefly, for the mention there. The local government committee work and the inquiry that's going to take place is crucially important to understanding the reason why people are so disengaged with politics and I think cross-party within this Chamber, we do need to understand the reasons behind that. Needless to say, as the youngest Assembly Member here in this Chamber, I'm always pleased to hear steps taken forward to engage with the younger generation and our future generations. I was particularly pleased to hear the Llywydd mention that the younger generation within this Chamber aren't over-influenced by the older generation. I can see Bethan Sayed smiling there as well, so that's good.

I'm conscious of time, so I will try and hurry this up. I just want to pick up on a couple of points. Firstly, on campaigning and consulting, would the Presiding Officer agree with me that the youth parliament should have the structures in place that allow it to represent the views of young people across Wales and its Members, stakeholders and local decision makers as well, and at the national and international level, for example maybe rolling out a manifesto outlining their brief, beliefs and aspirations as a parliament and as the representatives of their areas?

Secondly, I'd just like to say the youth parliament could also be a great opportunity for training and recognition. So, would you agree with me that training programmes could be run by the youth parliament to empower young people and engage young people with the skills, knowledge and confidence to bring about culture change—real-life culture change?

So, once again, very briefly, because I know other Members might want to speak, I'd like to welcome the statement from the Llywydd this afternoon and I look forward to the next process of establishing the youth parliament for Wales. Diolch. 

Well, thank you for that. You're our youngest Assembly Member, Jack Sargeant, and I hope you'll be the greatest champion for ensuring that people of your generation and slightly younger than your generation are interested in becoming members of the very first youth parliament here, but, equally, I hope that the oldest amongst you here as well are also big champions of electing into the youth parliament.

You raise a really interesting prospect of the youth parliament developing its own manifesto, its own set of policy ideas for it to pursue, but also to pursue with us, as the Parliament, as well. As I've said earlier, it'll be for the youth parliament to decide on how it does its work, but I'm sure it'll want to reflect on discussions that it has with us as elected Members. I'm sure there will be a very early relationship struck between the constituency Assembly Member for Alyn and Deeside and the constituency member for Alyn and Deeside in the youth parliament, just as there will be for the rest of us. So, having that dialogue regionally and on a constituency basis will be important in the relationship that develops between us as Assembly Members and them as young parliamentarians.

Ensuring that the work that we do with our young parliamentarians, that there is training and support for them, and that they then can become champions in their own areas for political engagement, for developing the next generation of parliamentarians, those that will follow them as well, and the work that they do within their schools and colleges as well—that all opens up a political discussion and engagement that we haven't had in Wales with young people. And that all of it can be possible with the establishment, the election, of our very first youth parliament here—.

I’d like to welcome this statement today. When I was elected in 2007 as the then youngest Member—Jack and Steffan have taken that from me since then—I immediately started campaigning for a real youth parliament for Wales. I respected the fact that Funky Dragon was in operation, but I wanted something parliamentary in this Parliament, so that there was a separate structure and so that young people could feel that they could be more critical of Government rather than them being funded directly by Government. They could then scrutinise Government and criticise it, and I very much hope that the confident young people elected to this parliament will be able to do that.

This isn’t a negative concern, but I did want to ask the Llywydd a question on political parties. When I stood as president of the student union in Aberystwyth, there was no requirement for young people to state which party they were involved with. On occasions, some people won elections that perhaps they wouldn’t have won if they had put a party name forward on the voting slip. So, I would like to understand: if there are young people who are members of political parties—which I think is a positive thing because they are clearly politically active—how are we going to be aware of that? How will those young people be made aware of the political or ideological agenda that is driving some of these young people and encouraging them to stand? I think that’s important, so that young people who are voting online understand exactly what they are voting for.

On the issue of online voting, I’d be interested to learn what we, as a Parliament here, could learn so that we can institute online voting in future. I brought a short debate forward, years ago now, in this Parliament, on trying to change the way we deal with voting in order to encourage more people to vote in an online system. After all, we bank online, and we do a great deal online, but we can’t vote online for this Parliament and this Parliament’s elections.

The final question I have: I’ve heard what you said in terms of working locally, but I want to understand more about that, because I think what’s very exciting about this opportunity is how these young elected members can work with local groups, and work with environmental groups or local campaign groups, in order to inspire young people in future to stand as members of the youth parliament, and also to think about how they could then develop and stand for this Parliament. What’s important is that this Parliament has diversity in terms of age and all sorts of other things, so that we can be strong representatives of what is happening here in Wales, and the same is true for the youth parliament. Therefore, I support what’s happening here, and I hope it’ll be successful.

Thank you, Bethan. It is delightful that some of the younger Members that we have here in this Senedd have led the debate on ensuring that we have a youth parliament. I am grateful to Bethan and others who have ensured that that discussion has stayed at the top of the agenda, and also to state that the youth parliament will have their own opinions—diverse opinions—and that they’ll be free to have their own opinions, and for those opinions to be uncomfortable and unexpected for us, as Members of the Assembly or the Government, on whatever point or subject that they choose.

The fact that there is an electronic voting system is very exciting. I’m really pleased that we’ve succeeding in establishing that. How long will it take us to establish an electronic voting system for general elections for local government and national Government here in Wales? That’s an issue that’s beyond the scope of my statement this afternoon.

In terms of the involvement of young people with political parties, when we consulted young people about the youth parliament, there was a strong opinion expressed in that consultation that they didn’t want the political parties to claim ownership of this youth parliament, or even to hijack, almost, the youth parliament. So, we haven’t created a system that promotes that—[Interruption.]

Trying to prove your youthful credentials there, David Rees. [Laughter.]

Anyone who registers to be a candidate for the youth parliament will put together a very brief manifesto, and they will outline, very briefly, their priorities, and then they will have the right to expand on that in that summary, then, in terms of their interests, their subject interests and their political interests, and their values, and so forth. That will be for them to decide at that point.

And then our intention is that we give an opportunity to the members to meet regionally—logistically, that is much easier to do at times—so that they can do more detailed work with youth groups and other groups, and to develop ideas that emerge from their areas and regions as well, so that we do the work that's not just about meeting in this place three times over a period of two years, but is more broadly framed than that, and gives a much fuller opportunity for those young elected members.

Thank you, Llywydd.