Senior Policy Adviser, Exploitation Projects Team, Home Office

Policy Fellow of the Centre for Science and Policy

Luke Hughes is a Senior Policy Adviser at the Home Office. He works on issues related to the exploitation of children and young people who are vulnerable to involvement in high-harm crime and abuse, with a particular focus on child sexual exploitation and abuse.

Luke is currently leading a project looking at how departments can work more effectively together to tackle cross-cutting vulnerability issues which lead to a range of poor social outcomes, and how we can build the evidence base of what works. He is also investigating what we know about child sex offender behaviour and how they can be better managed in the community.

Having worked in a variety of different roles around Whitehall, Luke has experience in the areas of transport, security, industry, energy, science and city policy. He spent three years in the Ministry of Defence, focusing mainly on international security and defence strategy and policy, before joining the Home Office in 2018.

Luke graduated with a degree in Physics from Oxford University in 2013. It was an interest in climate science and the societal implications of climate change, and involvement in the UNFCCC negotiations in 2009 and 2011, that developed his wider interest in politics and public policy.