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Brown 'an optimist' over UK economy
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Gordon Brown has brushed aside gloomy economic news, insisting he remained an "optimist" over the future of the country's finances.
The Prime Minister, speaking as the Cabinet met in Nottingham on its latest regional away-day, said jobs could be created and frontline public services protected despite ballooning public debt and predictions the jobless rate could hit 9.5% in 2011.
"I am an optimist about the future and I think it is wrong to be pessimistic," he said after a round-table discussion with people invited from around the East Midlands.
"Our vision of the future is one of improving frontline services while creating the efficiencies that are necessary in the backroom administration of them.
"I think we will be well served by policies which are optimistic about the future, that make sure that public services are fair to all and at the same time tackle the huge challenges that every economy faces in the world and create job opportunities and prospects, particularly for young people so they can say that their generation will do better than our generation as a result of the investments we make now."
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) predicted on Thursday that unemployment in the UK would only reach its peak in 2011, from its recent 7.8% rate. And official figures showed UK borrowing rose by a higher-than-expected £11.4 billion in October, taking public sector net borrowing for the financial year so far to £86.9 billion.
The gloomy figures came as the Government unveiled a Fiscal Responsibility Bill - putting plans to halve the UK's deficit within four years on a statutory footing.
Details of the Government's economic plan will be set out by Chancellor Alistair Darling in his Pre-Budget Report next month.
Before the meeting, Cabinet ministers made a series of regional visits across the East Midlands related to their briefs, including Children's Secretary Ed Balls who visited his former primary school in Nottingham.
The Prime Minister met apprentices at a college in Leicestershire and staff and families using a Family Intervention Centre in Bulwell, Nottingham. Ministers also chatted with invited local people at the round-table event followed by a question and answer session.
