Security will also be a priority in 2008 as the government lays out its national security strategy in response to the terror threat at home and overseas, Brown wrote in the message issued late Saturday.

"For Britain, 2008 will be a year of real and serious changes," he wrote.

However, he said Britain would counter the global credit crunch with low interest rates and by acting to keep inflation low.

"With unbending determination, in 2008, we will steer a course of stability through global financial turbulence," Brown wrote.

"The global credit problem that started in America is now the most immediate challenge for every economy and addressing it the most immediate priority," he said.

The credit crisis, which began in August, led to the first run on a British bank in almost a century when depositors panicked after Britain's fifth-largest mortgage lender appealed to the Bank of England for an emergency loan. The lender, Northern Rock, ran into trouble because of its heavy reliance on short-term money markets for funding.

On terrorism, Brown said the national security strategy would set out the scale of the terror threat and the challenges Britain faces in countering it.

"We will continue to work with our international partners to counter the ongoing threat of global terrorism, most recently witnessed in the atrocities in Pakistan," he wrote, referring to the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Thursday.

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