Blair: prevent problem babies - check parents.

Byline: By JOE CHURCHER

PRIME Minister Tony Blair has set out plans for state intervention to prevent potentially problem babies becoming the problem teenagers of the future.

He said teenage mothers could be forced to accept state help even before their children were born as part of a clampdown on anti-social behaviour.

"If we are not prepared to predict and intervene far more early, then there are children that are going to grow up in families that we know perfectly well are completely dysfunctional, and the kids a few years down the line are going to be a menace to society and actually a threat to themselves," he told BBC News 24.

Mr Blair, who earlier this week led a seminar on social exclusion with ministers and experts, is due to make a keynote speech on the issue on Tuesday.

Yesterday's radical proposal is believed to have come out of that meeting at Chequers and a Government policy pa-per on the issue will be published soon.

Mr Blair said action could even be taken "pre-birth" if necessary and defended the need for state intervention.

"You either steer clear and say that's not for Government to get into, in which case you don't deal with the problem.

"Or, and this is really what I'm saying, we need to deal with these particular issues and we actually do intervene and we intervene at a very early stage.

"If you've got someone who is a teenage mum, not married, not in a stable relationship: 'Here is the support we are prepared to offer you, but we do need to keep a careful watch on you and how your situation is developing because all the indicators are that your type of situation can lead to problems in the future'," he said.

Mr Blair said that earlier intervention marked the next stage in Government policy to help the poorest families.

"What I'm really talking about now... are a group of people that maybe have multiple problems who we need to identify far earlier and who the general policy - the New Deal, Sure Start, the investment in the schools and so on - really hasn't helped," he said.

"It's really a mark of the fact that as you move on you develop policy.

"And the policies that have worked enormously well, like the children's tax credit and the New Deal and Sure Start, have helped hundreds of thousands, millions of people, but you've always got to be looking at the next stage."

The Prime Minister expressed confidence that the work would outlast his time in Downing Street.

He went on: "I think most sensible people, whatever their political persuasion, will say, yes, this is a debate we need to have.''

Social Exclusion Minister Hilary Armstrong will set out an action plan incorporating the latest initiative soon.

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