MEP urges phasing out of French & German teaching and phasing in of Spanish and Chinese

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 7th Nov 2005

Speaking to the University of Bristol East Asian MSc students this afternoon, Graham Watson, the Lib Dem MEP for the South West of England and Gibraltar, will say:

"Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world. 1.3 billion people speak it, compared to only 1 billion for English. A further 800 million speak Spanish.

To prepare Britain for success in the global community we should be reducing the emphasis on teaching French and German and increasing provision for Spanish and Chinese.

To do this we need to train Chinese teachers, here in the South West we are extremely fortunate to have universities like the University of Bristol leading the way."

Graham has recently started learning Chinese at Bristol University