We’ll get the basics right for young people - Alex Cole-Hamilton

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey and Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton launch the Scottish party’s election campaign in North Queensferry. As part of the campaign launch, the leaders of the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Liberal Democrats met with candidates, parliamentarians and activists

During that time, I met scores of children and young people from some of the most deprived communities, facing some of the most awful circumstances. Getting them to believe in themselves, to build their confidence and participate in our society required a very careful, sensitive approach.

So, when Sunak kicked off the Conservative Party’s election campaign with a pledge to march every eighteen-year-old into 12 months of mandatory national service, I was infuriated.

To add insult to injury, the whole policy was dressed up as a way of engaging young people. Their press release boasted that it would ensure, “young people not in education, employment, or training, and young people who are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system…are diverted away from the lives of unemployment and crime.”

But this was little more than a sound-and-fury announcement intended to grab headlines, completely bereft of any evidence, sense or endorsement from key stakeholders.

If you have vulnerable young people who have been dealt a miserable hand in life and who already feel that the world is stacked against them, you will only add to that utterly depleted sense of self-worth by forcing them to do what they do not want to do.

It’s not a recipe for engagement. It’s a recipe for disengagement and, what’s worse, it runs the risk of those young people staying that way for the rest of their lives.

We also need to remember that the young people and children who would be affected by this policy are the very same who had to spend some of their most formative years in lockdown. The idea that they somehow don’t understand what it means to be responsible or make sacrifices is hopelessly blind to the reality.

Now, Sunak is rewarding them by corralling them into military service whether they like it or not. And why? All because the Conservatives have sunk to desperate levels, chucking out gimmick-fuelled policies day-by-day in the hopes that it could stave off Reform from pinching their votes and the deserved fall of their rotten government.

While they do that, good, meaningful and transformative youth work remains massively underfunded. Positive initiatives and social enterprises that can make a real difference are going largely ignored.

My party and I want to get the basics right, and reforming the rights of children and young people in Scotland is one of the ways we’ll do that.

We would roll out a permanent year-round nationwide ‘Holiday Fun Fund’ for children and young people who would otherwise be excluded on the basis of costs from formative experiences and activities during school breaks. We want to see greater rights for care experienced young people and we would protect and strengthen funding for youth work, supporting the services that can make a powerful impact on the lives of children and young people.

It's bright, progressive ideas like these that are the heart of who we are as a party. As a youth worker, I saw the change that was needed; now, with my voice in Parliament, I am determined to make that happen.

Alex Cole-Hamilton is the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats