EDITORIAL: The green paper is just the start for Hodge

Not many people would disagree with that - too many young people are unhealthy, there are too many teenage pregnancies, too many miss school, and suicide is the cause of one in five teenage deaths.

All this is acknowledged in the children's green paper, but the minister for children and young people went further at several fringe meetings during the Labour Party conference last week. She agreed, for instance, with National Youth Agency chief executive Tom Wylie's criticism that the green paper does not sufficiently acknowledge the needs of adolescents.

Where many are likely to disagree with her, however, is when it comes to saying why young people are ill-served. It's not that she doesn't believe enough is being done, but that she believes the wrong things are being done in many cases. In two meetings last week she said that around 3bn is spent on support services for 13- to 19-year-olds, taking in everything from education to health services to the New Deal, although in both cases she added the caveat that it was "a crude estimate of my own". She then went on to say she doesn't believe the money is being well spent. "One of the areas I'm starting to think about is 13- to 19-year-olds. I think we've done a lot already - there are more young people with GCSEs, there is the New Deal and the often unsung modern apprenticeships," she said.