On 10 April, I wrote to the following MPs/MP candidates to ask them to support the delivery of youths' priorities:

• Party leaders and existing MPs: David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg, Stephen Pound, Andrew Slaughter;
  
• Ealing North MP candidates: Stephen Pound (Labour), Ian Gibb (Conservative), Chris Lucas (Liberal Democrat); 
  
• Ealing Central and Acton MP candidates: Bassam Mahfouz (Labour), Angie Bray (Conservative), Jon Ball (Liberal Democrat); and
  
• Ealing Southall MP candidates: Gurcharan Singh (Conservative): Virendra Sharma (Labour), Nigel Bakhai (Liberal Democrat).

The reply by Chris Lucas of Lib Dem was rather irrelevant to my questions. David Cameron's response was no more than a template answer with no relevance to my letter at all. Rather annoying, but much better than others who just choose to ignore my appeal for young people.

The following is an extract of my letter:

"I write to you to seek your support for making some changes now and during the year, to make youths’ future fairer and better. Having consulted young people, Councillors and government policy advisers in recent months, I hope my manifesto is representative of young people’s priorities .

In particular, I would be grateful if you could suggest a time that we could meet shortly to discuss the following questions (preferably after 4pm or during the weekends) or share your views by email (youth.mp@devonchow.com) at your earliest convenience.  If you agree, I would like to publish your feedback on my website www.devonchow.com and report it at school surgeries to fulfil my duty of accountability and inform people’s decision for the forthcoming elections. 

Do you agree that these are the top priorities for young people?

• Make school curriculum fun and relevant to the modern world, their future.
• Help young people become more ready for employment and get a job (a fifth the 16-25s are currently out of work).

What specific actions would you kindly take to support the delivery of the following proposals, or what alternative ways could you suggest to deliver the top priorities?

• Propose a national review of school curriculum or granting more discretion to Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to adjust the school curriculum and/or teaching methods to make it more fit-for-purpose for local students.  It is clear that young people would like studying to be more fun and relevant to our future by having more action to complement classroom teaching, in particular:

• subsidised international student/young people exchange programmes for learning right attitudes such as about poverty, climate change and social inclusion; and
• subsidised gym membership during half terms.

• Liase with LEAs and potential sponsors to deliver the above subsidy programmes.

• Propose better access to tertiary education and a new start of life after graduation by:

• providing more means-tested subsidy/bursaries to make college/university tuition fees more affordable (this has been a priority of Youth Parliament in recent years); and/or
• offering tax holiday for the first year of employment after graduation, so that fresh graduates could use the saved tax to repay the loans borrowed for meeting increased tuition fees and other related expenses. This option not just enables fairer opportunities for a better future for youths, but also saves cash subsidy and incentivises more graduates to go to work rather than on the dole (which in turn generates economic growth, tax revenue and save social benefits because graduates have incentives to find jobs).

Assuming that the tax for a fresh graduate is about £3k a year (average salary be £15k pa) and the average subsidies for an international student exchange programme and gym membership are £1k per trip and £30 per student per half-term, £50mil a year can help 7,000 graduates repay their debts incurred for studying, fund 20,000 students to go abroad for some new experience and over 300,000 students to do more exercises during half-terms, let alone other savings to the government from reduced youth-related crimes and improved health (addressing obesity).  I hope Government can spend £50mil to trial my proposals.

I look forward to hearing from you soon."