STRETFORD and Urmston M.P., Kate Green, was at Urmston Grammar School for a question and answer session with students.

In July, pupils travelled down to Westminster, as part of the school’s Expo focusing on democracy. Included in their visit, they were due to have this Question and Answer Session with Ms. Green then, but the coach that was transporting them was delayed, arriving late at the Palace of Westminster, and the session could not go ahead.

The MP agreed to make up for the students’ disappointment by conducting the session in the school’s theatre instead.

Senior prefect, Sammie Audini, chaired the session. Among many other questions, Ms. Green was asked why she had become a Labour politician. She answered that, on arriving in London, from her native Scotland, as a student in the 1980s, she had felt “horrified and angry” at the huge contrast she witnessed there between the rich and the poor. She joined the Labour Party out of this anger, with a desire to address the issue.

Asked about young people’s place in politics, Ms. Green asserted that young people’s concerns were largely ignored by the government, because they were not considered vote-winners. She recommended that each person present get registered to vote as soon as they become eligible to do so, to ensure that they can cast their vote and have their voices heard in Parliament.

Ms Green’s forthright answers earned warm applause from the students, whose intelligent questions, in turn, were praised and appreciated by the MP,