A £200 million plan to end youth unemployment will be outlined today by Gordon Brown.
The former Prime Minister is to set out a vision for making Scotland the education and innovation capital of Europe as part of a drive to end child poverty and poverty in retirement.
The Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath MP will reveal in detail specific proposals including 17 new powers for the Scottish Parliament that he believes the Smith Commission could and should endorse to tackle inequality.
At a speech in Glasgow, he will say: “While the SNP’s answer to globalisation, slow growth, poverty and inequality is always independence; the better answer is global cooperation, investment in education and innovation, a strategy for full employment and the empowerment of poor communities through redistribution of resources to them.
“And these policies are best achieved by a strong Scottish Parliament but not losing the benefits we have by being part of the UK.”
Mr Brown will set out a £200 million youth employment programme paid for by a UK-levied bankers’ bonus tax that he says will cut youth unemployment and bring back many of the 140,000 students he says have been lost to the college system under SNP cuts.
He will say that Scotland’s uniqueness as an economy is not its oil but its openness and exposure to the global economy, which means the country cannot avoid the necessity to cooperate and coordinate economic policies with the rest of the world.