8. What steps are being taken to build on the votes at 16 campaign to ensure that more young people have the opportunity to engage with the Senedd's work? OQ56707

We’re currently evaluating the success of the votes at 16 campaign, and will use this insight, alongside data on election turnout, to inform our future approach to engaging with younger people. Over the past year, the use of virtual sessions with schools and youth groups have proved invaluable in reaching wider audiences. We’ll continue to build this into our offer for younger people during the sixth Senedd. The campaign for the second Welsh Youth Parliament is under way, with candidate nominations launching on 5 July. This will become the crux of our engagement work with young people over the next two years.

Excellent. Thank you very much and thank you also for the role that you played in ensuring that young people of 16 and 17 did have the right to vote in this year's election. Although many young people took that opportunity, I'm very pleased to hear that you will be looking at the effectiveness of that campaign, but I'd also be interested to know whether that research will also include those who chose not to vote on this occasion. I hear from a number of young people who were very excited about the opportunity to vote that they'd found it difficult to encourage their peers to raise their voice too, because they didn't feel that they were sufficiently informed and felt that they didn't understand this place well enough. So, given that many people who are now 11 or 12 years old will vote in five years' time, is there any intention to find out why people chose not to vote too in order to draw up a strategy for the future?

That is a very important point, and also, of course, the challenge in ensuring that young people register to vote in the first instance. Those two things are linked, and both things are very important. So, we will need, as we reflect on the election and the experience that young people have just had of receiving the right to vote at the ages of 16 and 17, on how they decided to vote and on why a number of them decided not to vote—. So, both aspects of that work and those two cohorts are very important. It's important to discuss with those who did vote and those who chose not to exercise their new right, or weren't even aware that they did have the right to do that. So, yes, I agree, hearing the voices of all of the young people is very important as we think about how we prepare for future elections, including, of course, the fact that local government elections will be held next year, and there'll be a new cohort of young people who'll have the right to vote the first time.

Thank you, Llywydd.