This afternoon the MYPs split into focus groups, one for each topic and campaign. This video features James Faulconbridge, Hayley Badger, Elmyra Chije, Paddy O’Brien, and Sarah McGlone.

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.

Josh McTaggart and Lydia Cheyne (right), Procedures Group representatives for host region the South West, opened this year’s Annual Sitting with some classic South West tradition. Dressed as farmhands, the two entered the hall to classic west-country songs.

After welcoming over 300 Members of Youth Parliament to Exeter University, McTaggart and Lydia began by introducing the Procedures Group; two representatives from each region of the United Kingdom that run the UK Youth Parliament

Andy Hamflett began his keynote speech with a west-country “Arrrrr” (above) and a detailed video summary of the last year at UKYP. It gave a brief overview of the elections, campaigns, V volunteering events, and of course the House of Lords debate.

After the video ended to applause, Ben Bradshaw arrived, and was ushered swiftly into his keynote. He spoke for little more than 4 minutes, introducing the Youth Parliament to Exeter, then opened the floor to questions.

Katrina Mather (left) asked Bradshaw, in his capacity as Health Minister, for a straightforward Government stance on compulsory sex and relationships education, particularly in relation to teenage pregnancy.

Other questions included “Why do asthma sufferers not get their medication free on the NHS?”. Bradshaw explained this by saying that there is simply not enough money to fund everything, so things have to be prioritised. He later likened this to the difference between England and Scotland’s healthcare after a question about devolution, pointing out that although Scots get free parking and free prescriptions, in England waiting lists are half the length.

There was also much discussion of the “credit crunch”, and Bradshaw feverishly defended Gordon Brown’s recent Government borrowing strategies, saying that these things had to be done in difficult times and it would not cause a significant problem later on. He stated that there would categorically not be a recession, but refused to say when he thought the “credit crunch” would be over.

Before leaving, Bradshaw explained his lateness: “And I’m sorry for being late, but you chose to hold your conference on the top of the highest hill in Exeter and it took a little while to get up on my bike!”

Up next was the second half of Andy Hamflett’s speech. He congratulated the Members of Youth Parliament on a great year, and reminded them of the results of a consultation done on the future of UKYP. The three main outcomes of that were: 1) Reach out to more young people, 2) More media coverage of our work and 3) More international work. On the first point, Hamflett showed in statistics the tremendous growth of the organisation. He revealed that the Commons Speaker had been talking to senior MPs about allowing the UKYP into the House of Commons to debate, after the successful House of Lords event.

Regarding media coverage, he explained that the UK Youth Parliament gets a huge deal of coverage in the media, and particularly in the last year has featured on both the front cover of the Times and in the Comment pages of the Guardian - over 200 press mentions a month. Hamflett also announced that the UKYP and its partner organisations were now the official young people’s voices for the country in the EU.

After Gail Lucas explained the rules, regulations and procedures for the event, the MYPs left to an ice-breaking session - the Big Picnic. This was a chance to meet MYPs from other regions and shout a lot to get to know each other, over some lovely local cream teas and scones.