Ossett School gets Political

The Right Honourable Ed Balls MP

On 8th May, the Right Honourable Ed Balls MP launched the first of a set of videoconferencing sessions with Parliament to engage MPs with their local constituents. These however were not your usual constituents, but a group of AS Politics students from Ossett school.

The students from Ed Balls’ local constituency took part in a question and answer session through the JANET videoconferencing service (JVCS), where they were given free rein to quiz the MP about current political issues.

The students were keen to understand how an MP could represent and pass on the opinions of all of his constituents to Parliament. An example they gave was the current debate about the embryology bill; Ed Balls is a supporter of this bill, contrasting with some of the students who had very strong views against it. His response to this was that it was very difficult to represent all views and the job of an MP was to portray a consensus of options from his constituents.

When asked about videoconferencing as a way of communicating with his constituency, Mr Balls saw it as a quick and easy way to reach a wider audience, which due to time constraints of a busy schedule was not always possible. He thoroughly enjoyed it and hoped to take part in many more such opportunities. Asked whether the videoconference had made them more enthusiastic about voting, the students answered a resounding ‘no’ as they said “none of the political parties showed any marked difference from the other,” so it seems Mr Balls has some work yet to do!

Tom O’Leary, Head of Parliament’s Education Service commented “the videoconference was a great success – the students were very clued up on current political issues and took the opportunity to raise these with their local MP. This is the first of a group of videoconference sessions planned for this month; we are very pleased with the outcome and hope to roll this out for wider participation in the future.”

Tim Boundy, Schools Content Co-ordinator at JANET says “we promoted the event over the JANET Collaborate website and had a very good response from the schools; the number of schools registered on the site is growing rapidly and it is these types of opportunities that we want to get schools involved in.”

Other issues the students quizzed the MP on were the 10p tax issue and the ever-contentious cannabis ruling. The students put forward the argument of cannabis being no less harmless than alcohol if consumed in moderation, whereas Mr Balls defended the ruling to re-categorise cannabis to a grade B drug. The tax ruling was an issue that Ed Balls didn’t defend, but explained that timing and the current economic climate had made this a very unpopular decision with the public.