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Morale-boosting Cabinet trip from PM

08/09/2008

Gordon Brown and senior ministers were in the Midlands today for the first of the prime minister's confidence-boosting regional Cabinet meetings.

The prime minister held a two-hour meeting at the Birmingham ICC, before which ministers made several visits to schools, hospitals and colleges.

A foreword document to Labour's conference later this month was among the items on the agenda.

In the leaflet Mr Brown offers reassurances over Britain's future, insisting that the global economy will double in size and wealth over the next quarter of a century.

It confirms a commitment to providing new skills to workers; recognises that economic growth has brought more climate change challenges; accepts that the UK needs to reduce its oil dependency and underlines the importance of tackling terrorism at home and abroad.

"Our country is changing," Mr Brown writes in the document. "The economy, technology, our population, society, and politics, at home and abroad, are all being transformed, and these five revolutions, linked together, are taking us into a new world.

"Never before have so many changes taken place simultaneously in so many different spheres, so quickly, and with such potentially radical consequences. And new times and new challenges have to summon forth new answers."

Mr Brown goes on to denounce the "solutions of yesterday" and says the government must 'square up to hard truths' and become more transparent.

"None of us can address all the new challenges we all face on our own. We are all in this together - individuals, families, business, trades union, civil society and government - all with our part to play," the prime minister insists.

"Together, in this new world of opportunity and change, there is nothing Britain cannot do."

Today's Cabinet meeting was only the second to be held outside London or Chequers.

In 1921 David Lloyd called a meeting at Inverness during his Highlands holiday after Ireland renounced the British monarchy.