Blair insists his legacy will stand the test of time

Mr Blair said he would be spending the last days of his premiership putting in place the "final building blocks" of long-term public service reforms.

He listed reductions in NHS waiting times, building more schools and tackling anti-social behaviour as some of his main achievements.

Interviewed in Downing Street for BBC1's Politics Show, Mr Blair said: "When you ask the question 'Will our changes stand the test of time?', the answer is they will."

Despite today's Royal College of Nursing report claiming that 22,300 NHS jobs have been lost in the last 18 months, Mr Blair defended his record on health.

He said: "When we came to power, people used to die on waiting lists waiting for their heart operations. People don't do that any more."

On education, he said only 80 schools in the country had 70 per cent of their pupils getting five good GCSEs when the Government came to power but "the figure today is over 600".

"The number of failing schools - cut dramatically, the number of 11-year-olds getting their requisite passes - up dramatically," he added.

Mr Blair said decisions which will be taken over the next few weeks will "secure the long-term changes for the future".

Mr Blair - who famously pledged to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" - conceded that law and order was an area of "huge challenge".

But, he said: "There is only one Government since World War Two which will end its time with crime down, not up, and that's ours.

"Crime under the last Conservative government doubled, it's fallen under this Government."

The Prime Minister described the recent spate of knife and gun crime, which has led to the murder of several youngsters, as "horrific".

He said: "If we look at these knife and gun crimes, yes, they are horrific, but it's their very exceptional nature which makes them horrific."

Mr Blair said legislation to tackle anti-social behaviour, which was "ridiculed" when it was introduced, had changed communities "dramatically".

He said areas where there were problems were not the result of "a general social breakdown" but were due to "very specific" circumstances.

Mr Blair said: "(It's) often to do with highly dysfunctional families that are actually beyond the normal bounds of the Government policies."

He said the challenge for the "next generation" of politicians was tackling the problem of those families who had been "left out of society's mainstream".

Mr Blair refused to answer questions on the forthcoming leadership contest - but also appeared to hint that he will comment on candidates in due course.

"I'm not discussing it until I announce I'm going," he said.

He said no government "ever achieved as much as you hoped you would", but he was pleased with Labour's record on the economy, the NHS, education, and child poverty.

"If you'd said that to me in 1997... I think I would have been saying 'OK, I'll take that'."

Mr Blair said he had spent the last few years taking decisions he felt were right for the country rather than worrying about popularity.

"I'm not a different human being from 10 years ago, but I am a different politician."

He added that he was not concerned about those who were currently playing down his achievements: "I'm content to be judged in the long term. We'll just wait and see."

The Prime Minister also hit out at critics of his wife, Cherie, insisting he was "very, very proud" of the way she had handled the pressures of being Britain's "First Lady".

"I hope people who met her, as opposed to those who read about her, will remember how she was.

"Cherie has probably done as much, if not more, charity work than anyone. I'm very, very proud of her."