LONDON (AP) — British banks need to be better regulated and have a stronger domestic focus, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said yesterday.

Banks should shake up their bonus culture and focus more on traditional activities such as mortgages and business loans as opposed to speculation, Brown wrote in an editorial piece for The Observer newspaper.

Brown, who once eagerly touted the importance of Britain's then-robust financial services sector, said manufacturing and green technology would be the drivers of Britain's economy — with banks playing a facilitating role.

"We want to ensure that the new banking system that emerges over the coming years ... becomes the servant of our economy and society, never its master," Brown said.

Brown's government is preparing to insure what media reports suggest could be hundreds of billions of pounds' worth of risky loans and toxic debt with taxpayer money. In return for the aid, Brown has said he expects banks to jump-start the frozen domestic lending market, an appeal he repeated in his editorial.

But he also seemed to call for a return to a more prudent, old-fashioned banking system, promising to impose more stringent capital requirements on speculators and appealing to British banks to support British businesses.