The Wellcome Trust is the UK’s largest independent biomedical research charity, committed to sustaining the scientific knowledge base and research community both in the UK and in its international work. Developments in bioscience research will affect our future prosperity and health benefits yet they also pose difficult questions about what society considers as acceptable. As they grow older, today’s young people will face tough decisions about, for example, their health and reproductive choices. Debating Matters provides a platform for tomorrow’s citizens to display how to consider, prepare and present reasoned arguments about these and other issues, and the Wellcome Trust is pleased to be the primary funder through its Engaging Science grant scheme.