JACK STRAW has admitted that his failure to study languages properly when he was at school has hampered his job as Foreign Secretary.

And he has resorted to regular lessons in a bid to improve his French.

The Blackburn MP said UK pupils should make a much bigger effort to learn modern languages -- unlike the young Straw.

The MP said: "I feel quite strongly about this.

"In an otherwise unblemished career at school, I didn't properly pay attention to my languages.

"Since I have gone into government I have recognised that that is a deficit for me and I have been making efforts to improve my French.

"The trap is to assume that people from other countries want to speak English to us whereas, in fact, we get much more out of a relationship with people if we speak their language.

"We have got to do more to get more children to learn languages because the numbers have gone down."

Mr Straw has confessed that learning French to make up for skiving at school means that, while he can now chat to his Paris opposite number in his own language, he daren't try official negotiations in anything other than English.

He said: "I try to have a lesson every week but it doesn't work out like that. It's more like once or twice a month.

"There is so much else to do.

"I wish I had done more at school. I did get my O-level in French but I can't remember the mark. It wasn't just not paying attention, it was family background as well. We couldn't afford to go abroad on holiday or for me to study abroad so languages didn't seem so important.

"But now, as Foreign Secretary, they do.

"I started learning French when I was Home Secretary.

"I am making progress. I can read the French newspapers now. I can talk to my French counterpart Dominique de Villepin in his own language but it depends on the context.

"We can make small talk in French but I wouldn't negotiate in it.

"For official purposes I always have an professional interpreter. Like everyone else, I can often understand more than I dare say in French."

But when asked which phrases and sentences he could say in the language of Charlemagne, De Gaulle and Maigret, the Cabinet Minister went uncharacteristically coy.

He replied: "I'm not going to get into that!"