The new culture secretary has mapped out a potential change in direction for the her Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

In an interview on Sunday, Tessa Jowell said the key purpose of her department was to help people achieve a balance between work and leisure.

Jowell said her department's goal was to improve quality of life. "This is about leisure, it is about free-time and there is an enormously powerful opportunity to help people improve the quality of their lives and the quality of their leisure time," she told GMTV.

Signalling that her department would perform a more active role than before she said DCMS would work towards achieving a better work/life balance.

"We want to continue to see more people in work than ever before but it's also, I think, important for government to do everything it can to support people in terms of quality of life," she said.