Government is tightening the screw on young people's lives

It is staggering that just two generations ago, the Conservative Party study group on youth policy was advancing ideas that would have put the Labour government of 1997 to shame. It advocated training and employment guarantees, more robust political education and the dramatic strengthening of youth participation in schools, albeit amid rising concern about youth unrest and social upheaval. Unsurprisingly, however, few of those ideas were pursued, let alone implemented, by the incoming Thatcher government of 1979.

Eighteen years later, Blair's Labour government instituted its de facto Ministry of Youth, the Social Exclusion Unit, and produced a raft of measures designed to improve young people's opportunities and enable their effective engagement in education and work, family life and civil society. Initiatives started around school exclusion, teenage pregnancy, homelessness and young people not in education, employment or training. Beyond the social exclusion unit, radical reforms of youth justice, new compacts with the voluntary sector and "new deals" for young people were put in place. The mantra was "youth support", although the velvet glove often had a hardly concealed iron fist within it - penalties and sanctions for non-compliance with the opportunities being made available.