Domestic Policy news : Brown: Globalisation a 'race to the top'

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Brown: Globalisation a 'race to the top'

Britain will only meet the challenge of globalisation by investing in a skilled and well-educated workforce, Gordon Brown said today. In his address to the TUC conference, the chancellor warned that while Britain was beginning to move towards the labour movement's ideal of full employment, an even greater challenge lay ahead. Asia's manufacturing output is now greater than that of Europe, while China and India are now turning more computer scientist and engineering graduates than the whole of Europe and the US combined. But the answer does not lie in protectionism, in hoping Asia will go away, but in "radically upgrading our skills, science and technology", Mr Brown told delegates. The global challenge was not a race to the bottom but a race to become high-skilled, high-technology economies. "We will answer the Asia challenge, not by becoming resigned to a Britain of low skills and high unemployment, but by creating a Britain of new skills and new jobs," he said.