65: 20 years of policy for disadvantage: lessons for the future – with Moira Wallace

In 1997, the New Labour government set up the social exclusion unit in the Cabinet Office. It was tasked with tackling what Tony Blair called ‘joined-up problems’ – social challenges like homelessness, school absence and exclusion, drug use and teenage pregnancy, which often have complex and interlocking causes. Analysis suggests many of the initiatives that followed had real positive impacts. So what lessons can be drawn for the considerable challenges we face today?

In conversation with our Chief Executive Jennifer Dixon, Moira Wallace – a former senior civil servant who led the unit – reflects on its work, the approaches it pioneered and how change was delivered on the ground. With near-record numbers of young people not in education, work or training – and public investment constrained – what options are available to the current Labour government? And how could changes to the wiring of government help to tackle this and other social challenges?

Show notes

Wallace M (2023). Trends in adolescent disadvantage: policy and outcomes for young people under Labour, the Coalition, and the Conservatives (1997 to 2019). 

Wallace M (2025). Reducing school absence: innovation lessons from the last Labour government. 

Health Foundation (2024). Sure Start: a model for long-term policymaking? – with Naomi Eisenstadt and Donna Molloy.

Health Foundation (2025). No child left behind: what the government’s child poverty strategy should aim to deliver. 

Health Foundation (2026). Why are a growing number of young people who are NEET reporting work-limiting health conditions?

Resolution Foundation (2025). False starts: what the UK’s growing NEETs problem really looks like, and how to fix it. 

Teenage Pregnancy Knowledge Exchange and University of Bedfordshire (2025). Teenage pregnancy and young parenthood: successes, challenges and opportunities.