Social Exclusion Unit (Hansard, 30 October 2001)

§ The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Morgan of Huyton)

The Social Exclusion Unit was set up to help improve government action to reduce social exclusion by producing "joined-up solutions to joined-up problems". The unit has published reports on five key areas: truancy and school exclusions; rough sleeping; neighbourhood renewal; teenage pregnancy; and bridging the gap: 16 to 18 year-olds not in education, training or employment.

The unit was reviewed in the summer of 1999. The review said that, while it was then too early to judge the impact on the ground of the unit's reports, external feedback and the group carrying out the review produced a broad measure of agreement that the unit had been a success so far and was well conceived. The quality of the unit's reports and analysis was widely praised; its recommendations were accepted as sound and were being implemented, and the unit was having a broader impact on raising the profile of social exclusion and pioneering new ways of working.

The Prime Minister announced the results of this review in December 1999 and decided the unit would continue in existence. Since then the unit has worked closely with other government departments or crosscutting units that implement its reports. The strategies in the reports are for the long-term but there is already strong evidence of real change. For example, numbers of people sleeping rough in England have fallen by 62 per cent since 1998; conception rates for under-16s in England fell by 7 per cent in 1999 compared with the previous year, and by 4 per cent for under-18s; the number of teenage parents out of education, training or work came down from 84 per cent in 1997 to 69 per cent in 2000; and numbers of pupils permanently excluded from school were down by a third in 1999–2000 compared to 1996–97.