British Prime Minister Gordon Brown set out his vision on Monday afternoon in Bournemouth for his country to meet global challenges from economic competition and climate change.
In his first keynote speech at the Labor Party annual conference as leader and prime minister here in the southern coastal city, Brown reiterated his passion about education and health care.
He pledged to offer free universal education from nursery school at three to advanced studies or training right to 18, and move the right to education from 11 years free education to 15 years. In addition, there would be more grants to students and children from poor families, and more changes to make British schools and universities world class.
On reforming the National Health Service, the prime minister vowed to clean up hospital wards and make services accessible and personal.
"We will extend the ages for breast cancer screening by six years, treat every suspected breast cancer as urgent and guarantee your consultant can fast track you," he told the conference, adding that Britain is to invest 15 billion pounds (some 30 billion U.S. dollars) in medical research to combat cancer and the deadliest of diseases.
With regard to the country's economic achievement which has witnessed the "longest uninterrupted period of economic growth in the history of our country," Brown stressed his vision of a Britain leading the global economy by skills and creativity, enterprise and flexibility, investment in transport and infrastructure, as well as a world leader in science, financial and business services, energy and environment, creative industries and modern manufacturing.
To tackle the housing problem, Britain will build 10 new eco- towns with low and zero carbon homes and increase house-building to 240,000 new homes a year.
Issues of immigration and crime are also high on the agenda, whereas environment protection is one other major challenge.
"Britain will now become the first country in the world to write into law binding limits on carbon emissions," he said.
The prime minister also pledged to the work for a new post- Kyoto UN climate change agreement to help the poorest, binding targets for all the richest countries.
Source: Xinhua
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