The plan for a parliament of young people to sit in the Council Chamber of City Hall, with a mandate to make decisions and run its own budget, sounds like an excellent, imaginative way of involving and empowering a generation which can make or break the future of this city.

Young people have tremendous potential to work for the good. They have energy. They have ideas. They have talent which, once it has been identified and harnessed, can be of immense benefit to themselves and society.

Unfortunately, that same energy either running out of control or maliciously channelled can also do a lot of harm. That was seen to most alarming effect in the various riots which have torn Bradford. But it also shows itself in the disruption caused regularly by groups of teenagers who gather in the villages and suburbs around Bradford, vandalising local amenities and causing a great deal of concern to the residents.

There is a pressing need for the younger generation to be brought in from the cold. They need to be encouraged to understand that this is not a city run for and by older people with themselves as outsiders.

It is their city. They can turn it into the sort of place where they can be proud to live and work and eventually raise their own families.

This proposed "parliament" will give them a platform from which to say what they think is right and wrong. However, the Council will then need to take up their ideas and act on them if the parliament is not to be regarded as a mere talking shop.