All of the policy which the Scottish Youth Parliament has passed is publicly available on the SYP website, however quite a lot of people may be unaware how to find it. Most of this information can be found in the "Our Work" part of the website where our various projects are split into different sections. Here's a guide to all of them.
First of all you can find the "Campaigns" section which discusses the Scottish Youth Parliament's work on our campaign priorities which we voted on at the beginning of the SYP term, based on our constituents views. Our current campaign priorities are:
Make sure to click the links to find out more about these campaign priorities, so far we've mostly finished the "Climate Crisis" and "Right to Food" campaign priorities and we've started focusing on the "Drug related harm as a public health issue" campaign priority.
What campaign priority do you think is most important?
The Climate Crisis
Right to Food
Drug related harm as a public health issue
Educational Attainment
You can find some of our most important policy on our "Manifesto" page. Here the work of our subject committees are detailed. At the start of each year MSYPs choose a subject committee to be a part of which focuses on campaigning and producing policy around a specific area. I've chosen to be part of the TERA committee (Transport, Environment and Rural Affairs) for both of my years as an MSYP so far. The full list of committees is:
By clicking each section you are able to see some of the most major policy that SYP has enacted and campaigned for, along with evidence from consultations that MSYPs have done to get people's opinions on the motions.
The "Projects" section of the website focuses not on policy, but various ways which the SYP has helped to make sure that young people have a say on various issues and current decision making. From this page you can see SYP's past projects and also the ones which we are currently undertaking. The current SYP projects are:
SYP's "Policy Log" is probably is one of the most versatile parts of the website, here you can find all of the policy that SYP has passed and is still active (the policy passed at our most recent sitting hasn't been updated on the policy log yet). You won't find much ancient policy on here though, our policy does eventually expire and is only renewed if it is deemed to still be relavent, the oldest policy on the site dates back to our sitting in March of 2016.
So why is it versatile? You can adjust the filters at the top of the page to find practically anything you want. You can filter policy by subject, type, agreement voted on and keywords of your choosing. You can also sort policy by how new it is. Currently SYP has 260 active policies, and if you can't find something on there that you feel strongly about, make sure to contact me on the Policy Suggestions Forum on my website or contact me through my email or contact form.
If you are confused about what the different types of policy are, stay tuned as I'm going to be creating a guide on my website soon.
Finally I'd like to talk about the "Our Impact" section. SYP campaigns have led to radical changes over the years, encouraging the Scottish Parliament to pass bills on issues that have positively impacted the lives of young people across Scotland. Some of our highlights are:
The incorporation of the UNCRC (United Nations Rights of the Child) into Scots Law
Votes at 16
Free bus travel for under 22 year olds
While these are some of our most well known impacts, we've done much more. You can find out many of the changes that we have influenced throught this part of the SYP website.
Thanks for reading this guide, if you are interested in seeing more of these please like the post to let me know. If you're not so keen on this sort of content, let me know on the Website Suggestions Forum and tell me what sort of thing you'd like to see instead.
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