The Members of Youth Parliament split into 12 debates, on issues from terrorism to equality, public transport to the death penalty.

The group discussing Education Maintenance Allowance were considering that it might not be an incentive for people to stay in education, and if the young person really wanted to go to school/college they would work to make up the money anyway.

Hanisha Soni, DMYP for Buckinghamshire, felt the argument that it should be stopped because young people waste it on alcohol etc is invalid, because that could be said about any kind of benefit. For example, just becasue some people on Jobseekers’ Allowance are not actively seeking employment does not mean the whole system should be stopped.

From the Sex & Relationships education (SRE) in primary schools debate: “Our current SRE is rubbish, you just get shown a video of a woman having a baby, it’s not even a real video, it’s a cartoon. How are you supposed to know what safe sex is if you don’t know what sex is?”.

The teenage stress group thought peer counselling was a really successful idea; that people who had overcome bullying problems, for example, were often best at helping others with them. They also felt stress was sometimes only an excuse not to do any work - but that it is also a real problem for some people.

Making friends on the internet was reccomended as a way to find someone to talk to; it makes it easy to find people in the same situation as you, and it can be as anonymous as you like. The group thought that internet safety fears were over-hyped.

The group debating Ages and Young Peoples’ Rights felt that young people were not aware of and did not understand their rights, particularly the UN Childrens’ Rights Charter. The group agreed with Josh Chesterman, MYP for Swindon, that there should be a compulsory curriculum of young people’s rights in every school, because if young people knew their rights they would be in a better position to benefit from them.

The right to vote was widely supported, as was the right not to vote. It was agreed that we should have the right to be free, a right to shelter, to abort, to privacy and to be listened to, amongst others. The group felt that in a true democratic society, we would be trusted with the responsibility to vote - but it was emphasised that there was no obligation to vote. Most of the MYPs now disagreed with the North West’s campaign for a standardised age of adulthood, because they felt one single age would make the transition too sudden.