Clare McNeil

Clare’s areas of expertise include the welfare state, economic security, labour market and skills, public service & government reform and demographic change. She is co-founder and founding chair of Workwhile (previously the London Progression Collaboration), an initiative incubated by IPPR which has transformed lives by working with businesses to create over one thousand apprenticeships for disadvantaged adults and young people.

Clare was an Associate Director at IPPR leading the organisation’s research on social policy between 2015-2021. Before that she was a senior research fellow for energy and climate change and a research fellow in the work and welfare state team. She led influential programmes on social investment & the future of the welfare state and is the author and editor of more than twenty pamphlets, chapters and essays. These include reports on the UK’s working poverty crisis and reforming the UK’s social security and skills systems. In 2018 she set up the London Progression Collaboration to enable low paid Londoners to progress into better work, in partnership with the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority (GLA). Clare has also worked as an adviser to the Cabinet Office, where she led reforms to improve levels of diversity and inclusion within the senior civil service.

Clare is a presenter for BBC Radio 4’s Analysis series and has appeared often on national broadcast media, including on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4 Today programme, BBC, ITV & Channel Four news and Sky news. She has written on public policy issues for the Times, the Guardian and the New Statesman among other publications. She has guest-lectured and chaired events for organisations including the European Union, University of Oxford and Chatham House. Clare started her career working for NGOs including Addaction, the national substance misuse agency and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent and the British Red Cross.