What aspects of youth employment policy from other UK jurisdictions were promoted by the Minister for Youth Employment when representing th…

My contribution at the Education, Youth, Culture and Sport Council on 27 November 2012 focused on structured arrangements in the UK and in Scotland for supporting and enabling representative groups of young people to have their say in decisions. I highlighted that the British Youth Council has been awarded funding by the Department for Education to promote the voice of young people, and that the Scottish Government is funding national youth organisations, including the Scottish Youth Parliament and Young Scot, to enable young people to make informed choices and decisions about issues affecting them.
I stressed my commitment that young people in Scotland from every background should have a voice in policy debates about their future and that I have engaged with diverse groups of young people on how to tackle youth unemployment. Specifically, I referred to the national youth summit on 5 December 2012 at which I and five other Scottish Government Ministers were joined by over 100 young people at different stages of unemployment and training to discuss what more they think needs to be done to support youth employment.