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Use of the Chamber (Youth Parliament)

I have not spoken to any of the individual participants, but I have spoken with a number of people who observed their proceedings, and every single person to whom I spoke said that that the participants behaved in an impeccable and impressive way, and were excited and thrilled. Everything that they did was a credit to them, and indeed to the sort of processes that we would like to see them observe. As an experiment, it was 100 per cent. successful and laudable. The question remains of whether this House would like those young people—youth parliamentarians, as they see themselves—to be able to sit on the leather Benches, which all of us have fought very hard to do. It ends up being a decision on whether we think that what we have done is so fantastic that no one else should be allowed just to get that little tingle of excitement from feeling that they might one day be able to do what all of us have done. We are not the permanent stewards of this place. We are passing through it, and for democracy to survive, other generations will have to replace us. Why, under the right terms and conditions and following the right rules, do we not allow them that thrill and excitement and hope that perhaps in a few years a genuinely elected Member of Parliament will say that their inspiration for politics derived in part from that day when they were experimenting, sitting here and getting the excitement of this place, and they suddenly realised that politics does matter, that Parliament does matter, and that a senior group of elected parliamentarians gave them the privilege and the permission to do it for just a day?