Diana meets several hundred students across East Riding and Hull

12.00.00pm GMT Sat 5th Dec 2009

On Friday morning, local Liberal Democrat MEP, Diana Wallis, met GCSE students at South Hunsley school ahead of their visit to the European Parliament in Brussels next week. After a short break, Diana then met sixth form linguists and other sixth formers interested in politics from 10.15am until 11.00am.

The South Hunsley GCSE students will be visiting the European Parliament on Friday the 11th December. Diana has helped the group find a speaker from the Translation Service whist they are in Brussels. The visit will be part of a wider trip to Belgium, Germany and France for students studying French and German at GCSE level (ages 15 to 16). There are 50 students along with several members of staff making the trip.

Diana Wallis said:

"It is wonderful that this group is visiting the Parliament in Brussels next week. I hope they will get the chance to get to know more about the work of a local MEP and also to see what a valuable resource their language skills are and how it might open up all sorts of opportunities for them."

Eleanor Miles, the teacher organising the visit, said:

"'The objectives of the visit are numerous but our primary aims are to further cultural understanding and to increase awareness of the need to communicate with other European countries.

"We feel our students currently know little about the European Union or the extent of its influence and we would like them to be introduced to its work and institutions as a means of achieving our aims."

Later in the afternoon Diana was part of a panel which took questions from several hundred 6th formers from across the region who had been invited to attend the University of Hull's Politics Department's 6th form conference: 'Parties and Parliament in the 21st century'.

And later still, again at the University of Hull, she was part of a Question Time-style panel as part of what has been described as the first regular political programme for the UK's youth. The programme, Uni-Q, is produced by Catch21.co.uk in association with The Independent newspaper online.

(Photo shows Diana with teacher Eleanor Miles (South Hunsley School) and the Headteacher Chris Abbott)