At a Labour Party fringe debate organised by Children & Young People Now and The National Youth Agency, Richard Angell, chair of the Young Labour National Committee, said: "Services for young people always get cut first because young people can't stage a fightback in the ballot box." Angell said 16- and 17-year-olds should be given the vote "because they have to be positive about the future".
Peter Watt, chief executive of The Campaign Company, which has helped to devise the Young Mayor Network, said youth services might be deemed easy to cut.
"Most people are not able to explain how youth services work. If you can't explain it they'll be prime for cutting," Watt said. "You need to hang the youth services on something visible and we contend that that would be direct representation. Whether that's a young mayor or UK Youth Parliament representative, they're the faces of all the good things going on."
Fiona Blacke, chief executive of The National Youth Agency, said the onus must be on communities to back young people in the face of cuts to public spending. She suggested local authorities should involve young people more in delivering services that could be subject to cuts.
But Anne Longfield, chief executive of charity 4Children, bemoaned a lack of coherence on government initiatives for young people. "There are lots of programmes but no glue to bind them together," she said. She suggested the solution might lie in involving young people in the delivery of all initiatives, regardless of who they are aimed at.
