After more than a quarter of a million young people voted in the Make Your Mark ballot to decide what the UK Youth Parliament should campaign on over the coming year, we are delighted to announce the top five topics that Members of Youth Parliament will debate when they visit the House of Commons in November.

This year has seen the highest ever turnout for a UK Youth Parliament Make Your Mark ballot, with a record 253,637 votes counted at the most recent British Youth Council conventions.

The four topics that received the most votes in the ballot were:

  1. Make public transport cheaper, better and accessible for all
  2. Getting ready for work
  3. Marriage for all
  4. An equal National Minimum Wage for all
  5. A fifth topic, A curriculum to prepare us for life, was chosen directly by Members of the Youth Parliament.

These topics will form the basis of the annual House of Commons debate on 23rd November 2012. This year's debate takes place as part of Parliament Week (19th - 25th November), a week-long series of events that aims to get young people involved with Parliament and democracy in the UK.

Get involved and 'Create the Debate'

Now that the priority campaigns have been decided, we're encouraging young people to use this Create The Debate pack, produced by Parliament's Education Service with help from the UK Youth Parliament and BBC Three's Free Speech, to debate and vote on them in their schools, comparing their views with those of the MYPs casting their votes in Parliament. 

 

The pack is available to download for free and will be supported by short films on each of the topics made by Free Speech, a youth debate programme produced by BBC Three.

BBC Three's Free Speech has teamed up with celebrities such as SB.TV's Jamal Edwards, T4's Georgie Okell and Gemma Cairney from Radio 1 who have created exclusive online films to introduce each debate topic to get students talking.Every day this week (22-26 October) at midday a new film will be released online on Facebook and Twitter.

You can also watch the UK Youth Parliament debate these five issues live from the House of Commons on BBC Parliament (23 November).