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.
Objectives.
- Luke’s key objective would be to gain a better understanding of the research landscape relevant to his current policy area and other ‘big picture’ issues with public policy implications.
- Luke joined the Civil Service straight after graduating with a degree in Physics. The Policy Fellowship would be his first proper chance since graduating to explore ways to apply his understanding and appreciation of science and research to social policy issues.
- Having only recently moved into the social policy area, he would like to build his networks both within academia and the wider public policy arena, to give him sources of challenge and external perspective on policy issues that he works on now or in the future.
- Within the Exploitation Projects team, Luke and his colleagues can generate ideas for projects from a variety of sources, including academia. The project outputs enjoy considerable senior interest within and beyond the Home Office. Luke would be keen to get researchers’ insights into where we could be focusing our efforts.