Today Luke welcomed the results of the Youth Parliament’s Make Your Mark campaign’s ballot, which revealed the five issues young people want to be prioritised. The issues cover votes at 16 and the national curriculum as well as work experience opportunities.

The UK Youth Parliament’s widely supported Make Your Mark campaign is a unique opportunity to reach out to young people, the leaders of the future, to hear what matters to them. Almost 950,000 young people voted on their top five issues, 13,061 from Plymouth, which will be debated in the Youth Parliament in November.

The five priorities are:

• A curriculum to prepare young people for life -; covering finance, sex and relationships, politics
• Transport -; making public transport cheaper, better and more accessible
• Work Experience Hubs for 11-18 year olds -; creating an online space to help young people to discover work experience
• Votes at 16 -; giving 16 and 17 year olds the right to vote in all elections and referendums
• Protect LGBT+ People -; treating all people the same and putting an end to discrimination

Over 13,000 young people in Plymouth, 57% of those eligible, took part in the vote to pick their top five issues. With the Young Peoples’ Brexit Summit on November 11^th, Luke hopes as many young Plymothians as possible will get involved and be represented at the Summit. The concerns of young people and the quality of their education is very important to Luke. In his 2017 general election campaign, Luke pledged to oppose cuts made to schools by this government, and is holding the Young Peoples’ Brexit Summit to ensure they get what they want out of Brexit, which, like Luke, many will not have voted for.

Luke said:

“I think it’s fantastic that so many young people took part in this campaign to voice their opinions on what matters to them. I’m glad that their opinions are being heard more and more, because there is clearly so much enthusiasm from them to shape the future of our country, and they need to be listened to. It’s something I’m very keen to do since becoming an MP, which is why I’ve organised the Young Peoples’ Brexit Summit in Plymouth on November 11th, to give our young people a say in what they want from Brexit.

The ideas that have come out of the campaign are great. The fact that young people want school to make them better prepared for life, want to be able to take part in our democracy, want more opportunities to gain work experience, and want to ensure that our society is inclusive of all people, bodes incredibly well for the future of our nation.”

Find out more about the UK Youth Parliament at http://www.ukyouthparliament.org.uk/makeyourmark/

You can follow them on Twitter at @UKYP