Use of the Chamber (Youth Parliament)

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful for the interventions of the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend. We were told originally that the Youth Parliament was different because we needed to get more young people interested in politics. By definition, the Members of the Youth Parliament are already interested in politics and political issues and are taking the lead on these things. If we want to find a group of young people that are not already involved in the political process and inspire them to get involved, we should invite everybody other than the Youth Parliament to come and sit on these Benches, because presumably they are the ones we need to reach. Those in the Youth Parliament seem to be the last people we should invite to sit on these Benches if our reason for doing so is to get more people involved and interested in politics. So I am afraid the hon. Gentleman’s arguments disintegrate straightaway.

What we have here is the usual rather sad charade of middle-aged Members of Parliament trying to curry favour with the youth and with the young vote. They ask themselves, “How can we give youthful voters the impression that we are trendy?” Basically, one way is to advocate motherhood and apple-pie tripe like this. They think that by doing these sorts of things they will prove that they are in touch with the youth and are really trendy, and that young voters will all go out and vote for them. I do not think young people are as stupid as hon. Members seem to think they are—that just because they are allowed to sit here once a year, they will all go flooding in and vote for those Members when the election comes. Hope is triumphing over reality, and it does not make them look trendy at all.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one way to call out those people who are trying to court favour is to give the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds? Then they can make their own decision.

[Philip Davies]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I do not want to test your patience by going off on a tangent about the merits of votes for 16 and 17-year-olds. I do not agree with giving them the vote; I make that clear. I do not want to dodge the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I may be right in saying that Madam Deputy Speaker probably would not tolerate a lengthy debate on that. I think we are really debating whether the Youth Parliament should sit in the Chamber, so I do not want to incur Madam Deputy Speaker’s wrath so early in her career as Madam Deputy Speaker. There will be plenty of other occasions when that happens.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am surprised that my hon. Friend thinks that regurgitating his argument is absolute rubbish. I was trying to make that point myself, in a spirit of compromise and consensus. He said in his latest intervention that Members of the Youth Parliament should be able to sit here because they cannot stand for election. My 12 and 10-year-old sons cannot stand for election, so presumably, following his logic, and given that we are trying to encourage more young people to get involved in politics, their school should be able to hold its annual debating competition here. Presumably that meets his criteria.

[Drew Hendry]

The hon. Gentleman is incredibly generous to let me intervene twice. Does he agree that if the public pay for a facility, they should get maximum access to it, and that we should be allowing people to use the public buildings they have paid for?