I am delighted to join you today for the 3^rd national youth building conference and to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the Young Builders Trust.

I’m particularly pleased to mark the achievements of the young people who benefit from your work by presenting the very first National Youthbuilding Awards.

And yours is an impressive array of achievements:

• There are now more than 100 youth building initiatives across the country, involving more than 300 trainees.

• More than 250 young people have got jobs after completing their training on a youth builders project.

• And 94 young people have been able to move into their own home as a result of youth building schemes.

At your first conference, 2 years ago, you heard from Andrew Smith about the New Deal. Since it started, the New Deal has created more than 350,000 jobs - and has played a major part in helping you to step up your youth building programme.

Just one example is the scheme on Bowers Avenue in Norwich which Nick Raynsford [Minister for Housing] visited last year.

Through a partnership between the Young Builders Trust and Cottam Housing Association seven New Dealers gained NVQ2 qualifications in carpentry and joinery while working with a local contractor on 14 new houses – some of which will become their homes.

Joined up partnership in action, making a real difference.

The Youth Builders Trust is creating real opportunities for some of our most disadvantaged young people:

• the opportunity to train and learn skills that will stand them in good stead in the job market;
• the opportunity to live independently in their own homes;
• and crucially, the opportunity to build up confidence and self-esteem.

What’s more, you’ve recognised that the only way to achieve long-lasting success is to tackle the complex problems which cause social exclusion in a joined-up and co-ordinated way.

This is precisely the approach that we are taking in government. It’s the only way to get to the root causes of social exclusion – crime, unemployment, poor education, poor housing and poor health – and to deal with the links between them.

Our goal is to narrow the gap between the most deprived neighbourhoods and the rest of the country. Our ambition is to ensure that all young people get a fair start in life.

Of course, I know I don’t need to persuade this audience why it matters that we narrow this gap – but a brief look at the statistics highlights just how acute levels of social exclusion really are.

Unemployment rates are six times the national average in the 100 poorest wards in the country. Burglary rates in some areas are a staggering ten times higher than in others – and three times the national average.

Just 1 in 4 pupils in schools in disadvantaged areas gain five or more GCSEs – almost half the national average.

Nobody should underestimate the scale of the task. Social exclusion affects not just a handful of neighbourhoods, but thousands of areas and millions of people.

On top of this, the gulf between the poorest areas and the rest of the country has widened dramatically in the past 20 years.

But I believe our determination to achieve meaningful, long-term change is unprecedented.

Sure Start, Welfare to Work, the Working Families Tax Credit and the minimum wage are among the initiatives that are already benefiting our poorest families.

• By the end of this Parliament, 1.2 million children will be lifted out of poverty;
• By April 2004, 400,000 children under four will get help through the Sure Start programme;
• And thanks to the introduction of the WFTC in October last year, more than a million families are an average of £31 a week better off.

When we came into power in May 1997, we realised there was a pressing need to look the most serious problems which cause vulnerable groups to be left out of society. And, importantly, we had to begin that challenge by co-ordinating policy across Whitehall.

The result was the Social Exclusion Unit, set up by Tony Blair to spearhead this work.

One of the most ambitious areas of the Unit’s work is the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal – a ten year plan of action to deliver more jobs, better health, improved housing, better education and less crime everywhere – and especially in deprived areas.

We’re setting up local strategic partnerships to involve all the key players on the ground. And we’ve set stiff targets for core public services to improve their delivery in deprived areas. An action plan for the national strategy will be launched shortly.

Two weeks ago John Prescott and Gordon Brown announced £800m of extra money for the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund to invest in areas where the demands placed on local services are greatest. Where investment in key areas of health, education, crime, housing and work need a major boost.

Alongside this work on neighbourhood renewal, the SEU has also produced four ground-breaking reports on key cross-cutting issues: rough sleeping, school exclusions and truancy, teenage pregnancy and 16 to 18 year olds not in training, employment or education.

My job is to act as the Prime Minister’s eyes and ears. I make sure that the policies developed from the report recommendations are implemented in full and on time.

This is all about action – not reports gathering dust on a shelf in Whitehall. We have set some pretty tough targets in every area and are already making significant progress.

It’s a shocking fact that in the 21^st century we still have people sleeping rough on the streets. To tackle it, the Rough Sleepers Unit has channelled £194m into programmes to help people who have been sleeping rough rebuild their lives.

Our target to reduce rough sleeping by two-thirds by 2002 is well on course. In June 1998 there were 1,850 people sleeping rough in England; by June of this year that figure had gone down to 1,200.

We’ve achieved by joining up work across departments - by providing additional hostel beds; by investing in permanent move-on accommodation; by setting up tenancy sustainment teams; and by working to prevent the next generation of homeless people through initiatives like peer education and support for careleavers.

We want to cut school exclusions and truancy by a third by 2002, and have provided more than £500million to fund action on truancy and exclusions. Every local authority is now working to achieve this target.

Between 1991 and 1998 exclusions rose from about 3,000 to 13,000 but they have fallen by 3% and 5% respectively in each of the last two years. And expulsions among black and minority ethnic pupils fell by nearly a fifth last year.

Introducing learning mentors through our Excellence in Cities programme and a work-related learning pilot are just two of the ways that we are actively engaging young people at school.

Our teenage pregnancy rate is the highest in Western Europe and we are taking action to halve that over the next decade.

Already, 141 teenage pregnancy co-ordinators have been appointed in all health or local authority areas in England.

Pilot housing schemes to help young mothers who can’t live with their families or partners will be up and running from next January. And a national campaign to raise awareness amongst young people of the issues of teenage pregnancy is to be launched later this year.

One in 11 young people aged 16 to 18 is not in school, training or employment. This is a huge waste of potential and can set young people on a path of long-term unemployment and disaffection.

Some measures are already in place to address this:

• Education Maintenance Allowances are providing support to young people to ensure that they aren’t staying out of education or training for financial reasons.

• The Connexions Service, due to be rolled out from April next year, will mean that every single young person in the country will have access to a personal adviser to help them make informed decisions about their future.

Already we have seen a fall in the numbers of young people not staying on at school or entering training or employment from 185,000 to 157,000. And as the Connexions service begins to have an impact, we can expect even further improvements.

As you can see, many of these issues have young people at their heart. Young people’s entire adult lives can be blighted if they suffer from deprivation throughout childhood and adolescence.

It is vital to break the cycle of deprivation, which can so often be passed on from generation to generation.

That’s why we’re ensuring better co-ordination of issues affecting young people at central government level. Paul Boateng has been appointed as Britain’s first Minister for Youth and his new ministerial committee will monitor the effectiveness of initiatives affecting young people.

And in this year’s Spending Review, Gordon Brown set up a new Children’s Fund worth £450m over the next 3 years to prevent children and young people falling into drug abuse, truancy, exclusion, unemployment and crime.

Of course, we couldn’t achieve any of these aims without partnership with organisations like yours, working on the ground, on the front line.

Our commitment to tackling social exclusion, combined with close links with local community-based projects like the Young Builders Trust, means that we while we still have a lot to do, we can be confident that we are on the right course to delivering the opportunities for a better, more fulfilled life for all our young people.