Gordon Brown says he won't rule out possible tax cuts

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has given the strongest hint yet that tax cuts could be used to kick-start the economy. The Pre-Budget report is due in the coming weeks and Mr Brown's comments have raised speculation that Chancellor Alistair Darling will include tax cuts to ensure families have more cash in their pockets - and therefore more to spend. He said: "What I am determined to do is to get all countries around the world trying to get their economies moving again and one way you can do that is by putting more money into the economy by tax cuts or by public spending rises." "That's something that we've got to look at in the next few weeks." Later, Mr Brown will use a high-profile speech in the City of London to say that Britain, the US and Europe should join together to provide leadership in the creation of a "stronger and more just international order". He wants this weekend's emergency summit of world leaders in Washington to reach consensus on a new framework for the international financial system, featuring a reformed IMF which will act as a global early-warning system for financial problems, he will say. The Prime Minister promised to work with US President-elect Barack Obama to build a new global society in which the markets are subjected to morality and ordinary people's interests are put first. In his annual foreign policy speech to the Lord Mayor of London's Guildhall banquet, Mr Brown will say that the transatlantic relationship between Britain and Europe and the USA can be the driving force behind the creation of a new international order. "The alliance between Britain and the US - and more broadly between Europe and the US - can and must provide leadership, not in order to make the rules ourselves, but to lead the global effort to build a stronger and more just international order," Mr Brown will say. "The transatlantic relationship has been the engine of effective multilateralism for the past 50 years. "As America stands at its own dawn of hope, so let that hope be fulfilled through a pact with the wider world to lead and shape the 21st century as the century of a truly global society. "And I believe the whole of Europe can work closely with America to meet the great challenges which will test our resolution and illuminate our convictions."

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ITN | November 10, 2008

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