Scottish Youth Parliament

The Scottish Youth Parliament

Pàrlamaid Òigridh na h-Alba
Nickname	SYP
Formation	30 June 1999
Headquarters	Edinburgh
Location	Edinburgh, Scotland
Fields	Youth Empowerment Youth Representation
Chair	Mollie McGoran
Vice-Chair	Ellie Craig
Board of directors	Emma Prach, Olivia Brown, Marcus Flucker, Crisantos Ike, Beau Johnston, Abbie Wright
Website	https://syp.org.uk

The Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) (Scottish Gaelic: Pàrlamaid Òigridh na h-Alba) is a youth-led, democratic organisation which aims to represent the young people of Scotland.

The SYP is made up of around 166 democratically elected representatives aged 14–25 from across Scotland.^[1][2] Representatives are known as Members of the Scottish Youth Parliament (MSYPs). The SYP uses the Scottish Parliamentary constituency structure to elect its members, with elections generally taking place every two years - every constituency area elects two MSYPs using the Single Transferable Vote electoral system. Over 71,000 votes were cast in the 2019 SYP elections.

Around 22 MSYPs represent Voluntary Organisations such as The Boys Brigade, Scouts Scotland, LGBT Youth Scotland and Haggeye instead of constituencies. These MSYPs are directly elected by the Organisations they represent.

The SYP meets three times a year at events called sittings. These usually take place in different Scottish Local Authorities, but were held online between 2020 and 2022 due to COVID-19. SYP returned to in-person sittings in July 2022 with SYP77 being held in Cumbernauld^[3]

The four core values of the SYP are rights, democracy, inclusion and political impartiality. SYP is non-party political, which means MSYPs do not organise themselves along party lines within the Youth Parliament. All MSYPs essentially sit as independents to avoid partisan politics interfering with their representation of young people.