Question: What is the British Youth Council?

Blossom Young:The British Youth Council is the national youth council in the United Kingdom

We're an umbrella body for youth organisations and represent young people's views to government and other agencies.

We've got 150 youth organisations in membership and we work with over 700 youth councils across the country to represent the views of young people, to encourage their participation in public life, to be key players in the youth policy field and to improve the media profile of young people.

Question: What are your key policy priorities?

Blossom Young:In terms of our key policy at the moment, we just ran a very interactive programme of formulating policy and there are four key areas coming out from that - health and wellbeing, education, employment and training, young people and the law and the voice of young people.

As part of our education campaign we are supporting NUS on their fees campaign and we will be on the march in London on 26 October.

We're also looking at access to education for young people, looking at the variety of training opportunities for young people - vocational and informal education.

We're also looking at where young people are involved in decision-making and we therefore support moves to have students as school governors. But we're also saying that that's not necessarily going far enough at this stage and that we'd like to see more of a way in which young people have a voice in decision-making within schools.

Question: Do you back calls to reduce the voting age to 16?

Blossom Young:Absolutely. I think Votes at 16 is a really, really important issue. Its certainly one of our key priorities for the year and will be one of our key campaigns. There are a number of reasons for this:

One of the things we see is that citizenship education in schools is increasing. This has been introduced to the curriculum and we're seeing it more and more in the formal education environment and so to then tell a young person who finishes their compulsory schooling at 16 that they can't vote devalues that experience and gives young people the message that their views are not valid.

Also we've got young people who do choose to go into work at 16, some who go into the armed forces and they are all contributing in tax and in other ways.

Young people do have the decision-making nous to be able to make decisions about policies and politicians and should have the right to have their say via the ballot box.

When we look at when women were denied the vote and when the vote was denied to working classes, there were a lot of arguments about them being too innocent to understand the issues - which is the same argument being used today.

There is also the issue of consistency, if young people are able to work and contribute to society in that way, surely they should be able to have a say voting for the government that sets taxes and decides how the country works.

This is definitely something we need to focus on and definitely something I want to see high on the political agenda this year.

We welcome the Electoral Commission consultation on Votes at 16 and are consulting our members on it.

Question: Are young people "turned off" by politics in your opinion?

Blossom Young:Actually I think young people are very much politicised now.

We're seeing instances of it. We saw with the war with Iraq that lots of people were demonstrating.

We're seeing that politicisation of young people in terms of issues as opposed to party politics and that is where young people are engaged with the political agenda.

Politicians have a responsibility to encourage the involvement of more young people in their decision making and to listen more to what they are saying, sometimes by meeting young people on their terms and by producing documents which are young people friendly.

Question: What should the government do to try and re-connect with young people?

Blossom Young:There are things, which are being done.

We see organisations like ourselves where consultations are happening from government and other agencies and often they will come to us to ask young people what their thoughts are about different issues. Currently we are developing a report for the Low Pay Commission on a minimum wage for 16 and 17 year olds.

There does seem to be a push to involving young people - and they are starting to respond to what young people are saying.

But it does need to be more direct. It needs to be more profiled, it needs to happen within local areas as well as a national basis and this means that politicians have to be accessible to young people in a number of ways.

This may be about them attending youth centres or meeting them face-to-face outside educational establishments.

They have to be available and look at the language that they use. A lot of government documents are not very accessible and although there are some initiatives, which have been set up to translate them, it doesn't go far enough.

Question: What are your views on the government's anti-social behaviour policies?

Blossom Young:The proposals certainly have the potential to unfairly penalise the young.

We've been supporting the Grounded! campaign led by the Children's Society to stop the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill in its current format. We've also encouraged young people within our organisation to really have a look at the ideas and discuss them within their own organisations and with other young people.

I think there is a lot that is potentially damaging within the anti-social behaviour bill for young people and I think its very important that agencies like ourselves, as well as young people themselves, present a united front in opposition.

Question: What is the BYC doing to mark Local Democracy Week?

Blossom Young:We've got an event on Tuesday which we're very excited about. Its about "Listening to Tomorrow's Voters Today".

We've got a number of speakers including Alun Michael and there will be about 120 young people in attendance.

We're going to ask questions of the MPs present and it will be about encouraging discussion. I'm sure Votes at 16 will dominate the agenda, but will also examine young people's involvement in local democracy.

We're also having a reception with the Electoral Commission and the Local Government Association where we'll be launching a new BYC lobbying guide for young people, called 'Young People - Influencing Decisions'.

This guide looks at providing young people with advice on how to run a successful lobbying campaign, along with explaining the UK political process and how to influence it.

Question: Looking ahead to the rest of the parliamentary year, how will the BYC be involved in responding to government policies?

Blossom Young:We employ a number of different methods to communicate our message to parliamentarians, including our media work and our forum site on ePolitix.com.

A number of our young people are directly in touch with influential people in government and some of member organisations are youth sections of political parties and they obviously directly link into their own party membership. We also organise Young People in Parliament events to bring young people together to directly discuss issues of concern and lobby parliamentarians.

We are currently preparing a consultation response to the green paper "Every Child Matters", focused specifically on issues for children and young people. We will be campaigning directly on some of these issues and working with our partner organisations will be important, but we shall also be meeting directly with MPs and ministers to get our points across.