PM: Crackdown on yobs

Tony Blair has pledged to address voters' campaign concerns by restoring "respect" for other people.

At the prime minister's monthly press conference on Thursday, he stressed the Cabinet's eagerness to stem the causes of  petty hooliganism and loutishness in neighbourhoods and city centres.

He said he backed the decision of the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent to ban the current teen fashion for the wearing of hoods over heads, which many people see as threatening.

Blair also showed a willingness to blame voters' own shortcomings as parents.

He told reporters: "I can start a debate on this and I can legislate but what I can't do is raise someone's children for them."

And he went on: "People are rightly fed-up with street corner and shopping centre thugs, yobbish behaviour - sometimes from children as young as 10 or 11 whose parents should be looking after them - Friday and Saturday night binge-drinking which makes our town centres no-go areas for respectable citizens, of the low-level graffiti, vandalism and disorder that is the work of a very small minority that makes the law-abiding majority afraid and angry."

The prime minister said people his own age - in their 50s - are reluctant to go into their local town centre on weekend nights for fear of abuse.

And he said Parliament must send a "very clear signal" that this must stop and will not be tolerated.