Tony Blair has denied that international affairs are distracting his attention from the government's domestic agenda.

Speaking to the BBC on Friday morning, the prime minister insisted that over recent months he had held more meetings on crime than on Iraq.

"Believe it or not, it doesn't maybe catch the headlines every day but the vast bulk of my time is spent on the domestic agenda," he said.

"I would say the issue upon which I have most meetings, where I bring together different Cabinet ministers and different people, is probably crime and anti-social behaviour."

But he added that "the international stuff, because of Iraq, hits the headline the whole time".

The prime minister also insisted that dealing with international issues was "part of the job".

"This issue of international terrorism can't be resolved by Britain on its own, and yet you only have to see what has happened to the oil prices - in part as a result of what has happened in Saudi Arabia - to realise that these issues now, they may be happening thousands of miles away but they effect what happens in this country," Blair said.

He also predicted that Labour could be boosted as voters begin to see improvements in public services.

The government's record on unemployment and investment in public services was increasingly appreciated by voters, the Labour leader said.

"I think there is a sense in which people do actually give us some credit for the changes that are happening," he said.

"When I first came into politics... unemployment was the big issue. How many times do people even ask us a question about that now?"