A global partnership between governments and business is the only way to prevent a future economic crisis, the chancellor has claimed.

Addressing the annual meeting of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development in London on Tuesday, Gordon Brown warned that Britain could not be insulated from the effects of the global economic slowdown.

Brown acknowledged that the timing of the meeting could not be more poignant.

"With the United States today experiencing a necessary slowing, Japan barely growing, and some key emerging markets experiencing renewed instability, the growth rate in the world's major economies this year is expected to halve while the world still faces volatile oil prices," Brown said.

He warned Europe against rejecting the principles of free-trade in an attempt to avoid the crisis.

"This is a moment not for retreating from global economic cooperation or losing faith in its efficacy and turning inwards, not to retreat into protectionism but a time for enhanced global cooperation. Europe must also show a leadership role," Brown warned.

The chancellor pointed to current economic conditions saying the situation was better than the last global downturn at the end of the 1980s. The G7 inflation today averages 2.4 per cent, compared with 5 per cent in 1990 and despite Japan's massive debts G7 deficits are close to zero per cent of GDPs.

Brown said that though Britain was not immune from events in America the economy was in good shape.

"No country can ever insulate itself from world economic events but it is because of the tough and decisive action we have taken - introducing tough fiscal rules and reducing the national debt, making the Bank of England independent and its success in delivering the lowest inflation for 30 years - that British economic policy is much better placed than it has been in the past in the face of global instability," he said.

He also pledged to help the hundreds of Scottish technology workers made redundant on Tuesday.

"For workers in Motorola, and other companies, we will make sure that for each and every employee there is direct and immediate government support to find jobs," Brown promised.

He called for a partnership between global organisations to improve how the world deals with future crises.

"Moving from a world of ad-hoc crisis resolution to one of crisis prevention and containment demands that all actors play their part in maintaining stability. For the private and public sectors this means adopting new responsibilities, but responsibilities matched by new rights and expectations," Brown said.

Widening his anti-poverty campaign, Brown followed up the decision by drugs companies to abandon their court case in South Africa with a call for biomedical research to be reformed. He claimed that only 10 percent of research is devoted to the 90 per cent of diseases that affect the world's poor.

With rioting by anti-capitalist demonstrators expected in London and violence in Quebec, Brown defended international trade and institutions.

"Global cooperation is the answer to those who criticise globalisation today. It is by strengthening not weakening the institutions of global cooperation that we will best steer a course of stability, and move faster in eradicating poverty and delivering growth and opportunity to all," Brown said.