1. Will the Commission provide an update on the Welsh Youth Parliament? OAQ53106

I was pleased to announce the names of the first Members of the Welsh Youth Parliament last week—a very special occasion. And I’d like to take the opportunity to thank the hundreds of candidates—over 450 of them—who stood for election, and the thousands of young people who registered and voted in a campaign that was without doubt extremely successful. Best wishes to the 60 new Members.

I thank the Llywydd for that response, and I congratulate the Commission on the work that it’s done to get the Youth Parliament off the ground. I think it’s an absolutely wonderful achievement that we’ve now got the Youth Parliament. I’m due to meet the newly elected Youth Parliament Member for Cardiff North, Betsan Roberts, soon to congratulate her. So, I think that’s very exciting for all of us Assembly Members here as well.

In my constituency, many of the schools were involved with the voting process, and I know that it was a very good turnout, and, was, you know, very—it did engage very well. But there were some schools that didn't appear to engage so much. So, I wondered if there were any plans to reach out to some of those young people who are not yet aware of the Youth Parliament, and also wondered if there were any ideas about how you are going to reach out to individual young people, particularly individual young people who belong to particular groups.

Thank you for the supplementary. Like you, I’ve been keen to meet the young representative of Ceredigion. In fact, I did meet him, Caleb Rees, and I’m sure that other Members will be looking for opportunities to meet their counterparts, those young people who are looking for our jobs. We need to watch our backs; we’ve got young people now wanting to become parliamentarians of the future, and I think that that’s great.

To respond to the issue about engaging with all schools, all young people, in Wales, I think there was a huge amount done to engage with as many young people as possible in the short period of time we had in the run-up to this first-ever election. There will be a longer period of time now to engage with young people in preparation for the next election in two years’ time, and, crucially, the work that these young parliamentarians will do with their peers and the young people they represent in their Youth Parliament. Those young parliamentarians will first of all meet regionally with young people also from their areas, listen to views from their various regions in Wales, and represent those views in the first formal meeting of the Youth Parliament here in late February.

And the point that you make about also ensuring that we include and reach out to young people from less advantaged backgrounds—the work that our partner organisations, youth organisations, have done in electing and choosing 20 additional members of the 60, I think that’s broken new ground as well. And the mix of young people that we have in the first Youth Parliament is, hopefully, a true reflection of the wide array of young people that we have in Wales. We can learn from the experience of holding our first election, and we can support our young people in allowing them to find their voice in Wales, and then that this doesn't become a one-off—this is permanent and for the future.

I also have met my Cardiff Central representative, Gwion Rhisiart, and I'm very impressed with the three priorities he has, which are to understand better the importance of apprenticeships and job opportunities for young people, focusing on school transport, including active travel, and also the opportunities for the speaking and learning of Welsh in English-medium schools—very excellent priorities. I think—. Obviously, this is a work in progress, and a very important work in progress. I think it'll be very important in due course to get the exact figures of how many people voted, what proportion of the potential electorate, and also the numbers cast for each of the candidates—there were 20 candidates in my constituency—because I think that is part of the way in which we can educate young people on what they have to do, and No. 1, they have to ensure that people are registered to vote, because otherwise, obviously, they're not going to be able to vote for them.

Well, like your representative in Cardiff Central, Caleb from Ceredigion also had local transport as one of his key priorities. His other two were the need for a people's vote and independence for Wales, so slightly different choices there. [Interruption.] Well, it could be many.

But young people will find their own voice and will come here and make their own mark, and it's important for us, I think, as an Assembly to make sure that we allow them to define the way that they work and how they prioritise any issues that they want to prioritise. Over 20,000 young people did register to vote. We need to make sure that more people are registered for the next election. Turnout is something that we also want to work on for the next election. It was an electronic election, but there were some opportunities for within-school voting as well, and that proved to be particularly useful in terms of ensuring that there was turnout. We will have learnt a great deal in how we ran this election, and we can review that and take the views of the young people themselves who were involved in it to consider how we develop on this for the future.

Thank you.