Richard Royal: The Government should be doing more to help job-seekers into voluntary roles

Richard Royal is a public affairs professional and has been a member of the Conservative Party since 1998. He is Chairman of the Westminster Russia Forum.

Last week we saw an apparently landmark ruling, as a scarf-clad student stood outside the courts declared that young people would no longer be forced into slave labour by the evil right-wing Government.

Unusual in the circumstances, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of pride when I heard the decision, having been following the full story for a while. Not because the young student, Cait Reilly, had won a victory over a particular scheme, nor because I hate pound shops – but because Miss Reilly had been forced to give up a voluntary role that she enjoyed and found useful in pursuit of a blunt instrument policy that led her down a meaningless dead end.

It reminded me of an experience I had a few years ago.

Richard Royal: Why we launched Conservative Friends of Russia

Richard Royal is the Executive Chairman of Conservative Friends of Russia.

Last week we launched the Conservative Friends of Russia, a group for those with an interest in Russian politics, history, business and culture. Our aim is to improve relations between the two countries, provide a forum for open debate and help to inform decision making in business and politics.

We absolutely understood that we were embarking on a controversial project that many would try to strangle at birth. And we were right! However, in contrast to the comments of armchair critics on Twitter who have not attended our events, my inbox is bursting with positive messages of support from attendees of all backgrounds – students, businesses, MPs, charities and cultural organisations. Many media outlets have praised our bravery in tackling a thorny but necessary subject. Certainly, our membership has expanded rapidly in the last few days.

Some say there is no such thing as bad publicity, but I confess I have been astonished and deeply disappointed by some of the things written after the launch, several by people I had hoped for better from.

It’s certainly a difficult time to be launching such a group, given some political decisions in Russia that may seem alien to us. But it is simply ludicrous to attempt to tie entirely separate and independent events together in some James Bond-style conspiracy theory.

Anybody who has organised an event of the nature we held last Tuesday will know how much work and advanced preparation go into it. It takes months of planning, which is clearly detached from decisions taken thousands of miles away outside of our control. Indeed my bad habit of hoarding emails reveals that I first spoke with CCHQ about the creation of CFoR in November 2010, before anyone outside of Russia had heard of Pussy Riot!