Panel biographies

Chair
Baroness (Sally) Morgan of Huyton

Baroness (Sally) Morgan of Huyton currently works as advisor to the Board of the charity ARK, and is also chair of Future Leaders. She is a non-executive director of both Carphone Warehouse and Southern Cross Healthcare and is a member of Lloyds Pharmacy Advisory Panel. Sally also sits on the Board of the Olympic Delivery Authority.

As a member of the House of Lords since 2001, her particular interests are public services and, as a former Minister for Women, equality issues. Sally worked for Tony Blair from 1995 and then in No. 10 Downing Street as Director of Government Relations until May 2005. Sally started her working life as a secondary school teacher.

Jo Swinson Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire and Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities

Jo likes hiking, reading, going to the gym and running. She suffers from a nut allergy, recently was a co-founder of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Allergies. She ran the Loch Ness Marathon in October in support of the Anaphylaxis Campaign.

She has spoken on a variety of subjects from the Child Support Agency, carers and breast cancer to licensing hours, domestic violence and breastfeeding in public and recently introduced a Bill to Parliament calling for measures to curb excessive packaging of goods.

As the first MP on Facebook and a regular podcaster, Jo is interested in how new technologies can be used to reconnect more people, particularly young people, with politics. At 27, she is the youngest MP in the House of Commons."

Andy Reed MP Labour MP for Loughborough

Andy has always taken an active interest in political issues holding a number of positions within the Labour party before being elected as MP for Loughborough in 1997. He was picked to be team Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in 2000, to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary Margaret Beckett in 2001 and to Dawn Primarolo in the Treasury in 2005. Andy's overriding passion is for sport. He is still playing rugby for his local team, Birstall, and enjoys playing volleyball and tennis for local clubs whenever he gets the time. He Chairs the National Strategic Partnership for Volunteers in Sport as well as the Shadow Board of the County Sports Partnership in Leicestershire. Andy is an active volunteer for The Scout Association leading a Beaver Scout Group on Friday evenings. He is married with two children.

James Brokenshire Conservative MP for Hornchurch and Shadow Minister for Home Affairs

James is co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Youth Crime and has raised a series of questions in Parliament on youth inclusion and volunteering. He previously served as a member of the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Select Committee and took part in the committee's investigation into the UK's compensation culture, including its impact on community and voluntary groups. James has also spoken in the Commons on children's health issue. Earlier this year he spent a week working with a charity providing support to the survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

James volunteers as a presenter on his local community radio station where he has a weekly show. He enjoys watching cricket and hill walking in Scotland. James is married to Cathrine and the couple have three children, the youngest of which was born five weeks early whilst they were on holiday in Cornwall last year.

Tom Wylie Former chief executive of the National Youth Agency (NYA)

Tom Wylie took up the appointment as Chief Executive of the National Youth Agency in 1996 from a post as Assistant Director of Inspection for the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted). He retired from NYA in August 07, and is now a trustee of Young Minds and of Rathbone. Tom also chairs an advisory group on young adults for the Financial Services Authority. He was born and educated in Belfast where he was a teacher and youth worker. Moving to England in 1970, he worked for the Scout Association and the National Youth Bureau. He became one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Education in 1979 and held various national responsibilities including managing the Inspectorate's Divisions responsible for youth and community work, for educational disadvantage and for curriculum. He has served on various governmental advisory groups; the Board of The Prince's Trust and committees of the Economic and Social Research Council and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. In his spare time he enjoys playing hockey.

Naomi Wilkinson, a Scout and Young Leader.

Naomi studies Theology with Hebrew and Ancient Greek at the University of Manchester. She is currently writing a thesis about the Concept of Beauty: how it has changed through the centuries and how it is culturally specific. Naomi has been involved in Scouting since she was 12 and is now a Scout leader. She was part of the Jamboree Organising Committee during The Scout Association's centenary year in 2007. When she is not studying or working, she enjoys cooking for friends, going walking or swimming, reading and tries to get to the theatre often.