Young people from poor backgrounds should receive public money to take gap years in Britain and abroad and "change the world", Gordon Brown said yesterday.

The chancellor told an audience of young volunteers that the government would consider funding teenagers to work in the Third World.

"If you take gap years, why is it that only people who have got money can actually take a year off or six months or three months off?" he said.

"Why shouldn't that be an opportunity that's available to everybody who wants to make a difference in their own community? One of the things that Ian is going to look at in this commission is, can we help provide the finance so that people can actually make a difference, even when they do not have money of their own?"