The UK Government says it wants growth but its actions seem to show the opposite, argues Herald columnist Guy Stenhouse.

Rachel Reeves has set herself two targets for the reduction - not elimination - of annual Government borrowing. These are rather feeble targets, we would still be increasing our borrowings when we should be getting the absolute level of borrowing down but they are, slightly, better than nothing.

Unfortunately, she is not on course to meet them.

What the Government should do is reduce spending but its efforts to that end have been both feeble and fruitless. Measures to slightly slow the rise in welfare spending were defeated by a combination of Labour backbenchers who cannot stomach what must be done and Conversative MP's who voted against them just to score political points even though the measures were a step in the right direction.

The Labour Government says it wants growth but all it does - new and unnecessary employment legislation, green levies making power so expensive our energy intensive industries are crippled - demonstrates the opposite.

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Desperate for growth........

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