Does the government give young people enough influence over decisions that directly affect them?
The government published its first National Youth Strategy in over 20 years in December 2025, aiming to empower young people in decisions affecting them through votes at 16, new Youth Councils, and a Youth Policy Network. However, the UK Youth Parliament, which has given elected 11-18 year olds a national platform since 2000, is set to lose its government funding after March 2027 and may close. Polls show many young people feel their voices are not heard in politics.
30 Opinions
The young are tragically alienated from politics. We are in a vicious circle where young people largely don't vote because politicians belong to, and speak mainly to, the Boomers and Generation X, and the politicians can do that because the young don't vote in large enough numbers to punish them. Young people have the biggest stake in the future and their voices should be heard the loudest.
Children should be allowed to be children, and teenagers too. By all means conduct surveys etc but they will only have meaningful answers when the effects of those decisions are seen in later life and by then we could have had another 5 PMs
Live a little before starting to tell everyone else .
Maybe too much. I don't want policy influenced by people without fully developed brains.
This is very specifically about those who can’t yet vote.
Unless the young can be encouraged to take an active part in the democratic process they will not have that voice. However there is no substitute for the wisdom and life experience only gained with age. Additionally the young may be unduly influenced by populist or simplistic logic that fails to survive rigorous exploration of its theory. The young appear to require more critical thinking skills otherwise they may choose unwisely.
Part of it is down to the disenfranchisement of young people that is endemic to our political system. Politicians known that old people vote in higher %s so they pander their entire policy to be tailored to old people (e.g. pensions spending as a % of GDP increasing exponentially forever). NIMBYism is the result, where our housing, infrastructure and welfare needs are ignored in order to protect the vote of people who won't be around to see the consequences.
Young people just like myself get as much democratic say as everyone else does and more. Why should they get special treatment.
I work with NEETs and support them into employment, education or training and understand the challenges they face. There are too many barriers they face, for example a serious lack of apprenticeships outside the main cities. There also needs to be a better variety of courses for 16-19. More needs to be done to give young people a platform for them to express their concerns and then action them
The question is confusing. But I don't think young people should be any more involved in policy making than they are. Those years are for childhood and I don't think we should be dragging kids into politics at a young age. Apart from the fact that the brain hasn't fully developed yet