The home secretary has announced plans to establish a Centre for Active Citizenship to promote engagement between the individual and the state.

At an event hosted by the Economic and Social Research Council, Blunkett warned that disengagement between voters and politicians will grow unless remedial action is taken.

He announced that the new body will work with the academic community to create a "vehicle for change".

"We need to foster a society that helps people to take more control of their lives and the decision-making that shapes the communities in which they live," he said.

"I am looking to promote a form of positive consumerism where to get something back from society, we need to encourage people to put something in.Blunkett said he wanted to build a society where "we act together as members of a community to shape our own lives".

"That is what real democracy is all about - the participation of citizens in the society in which they live, with an enabling state providing the resources, legislation, framework and accumulation of assets and capacity building, to equalise the chance of this becoming a reality for those without wealth or access to sources of personal advancement," he said.

"There are many challenges to achieving this - particularly the modern dilemma of how to engage people in mainstream politics.

"Positively, evidence shows that the vast majority of people recognise that they have rights and responsibilities towards the community.

"However this isn't necessarily being translated into engagement."

Voters must be seen as "partners, not simply as endorsers" of the decisions taken in their name.

"The late nineteenth century witnessed the transformation of community through municipal action," he said.

"The twentieth century through state intervention and welfare provision.

"In the twenty first century democracy must be revitalised to reflect aspirations as well as the challenges of an electorate who want government at every level to see them as partners, not simply as endorsers, of distant decision-making which seeks merely to legislate the actions of others."

The home secretary also suggested that the Hutton inquiry could be used to inform young people about politics, the media and the process of government.

"There has never been a system before under such scrutiny, where people's emails have been shown," he said.

"I would like teachers to demonstrate that far from this being a bad thing, it can be used to show how things work and how things don't work, how people are human beings and how they respond under pressure.

"I think it makes a very good case study. I'm keeping a file of cuttings from the daily newspapers to show how different newspapers report the same story from different angles."