What make a good minister? Is it how well they perform at the Dispatch Box in the Commons? Or their ability to field questions on Newsnight? Or even their ability to be a good lunch guest for a member of the lobby? The truth is that often we don’t know whether someone has been a good government minister until years after they’ve left the department and the policies they introduced have actually run their course, rather than just enjoyed a bit of media limelight.
Take the 1999 Teenage Pregnancy Strategy. Launched in June of that year by Tony Blair, the strategy examined a study by the Social Exclusion Unit and aimed to halve the rate of teenage pregnancies in ten years. It set up a national campaign to educate young people about the importance of using contraception, advice on how to deal with pressure to have sex, and about what teenage parenthood was actually like.
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