There has been some good news on the Scottish economy in the last week, which has been all the more pleasing given the continuing difficult UK backdrop.

Royal Bank of Scotland’s latest growth tracker survey, published on Monday, showed the private sector economy north of the Border returned to growth in May.

Scotland was one of six of the 12 UK nations and regions to record expansion last month. Its growth was driven by “strong expansion” in the services sector, with manufacturing output falling again.

The business activity index for Scotland - a seasonally adjusted measure of the month-on-month change in the combined output of the manufacturing and services sectors - rose from 47.4 in April to 50.5 in May on a seasonally adjusted basis to indicate renewed growth.

This marked the first increase in output on this measure for six months, and Scotland was placed fifth out of 12 in the business activity index league table of the UK nations and regions.

Meanwhile, Scotland was the only part of the UK to see growth in private sector employment in May.

Sebastian Burnside, chief economist at Royal Bank of Scotland, said: "Following a near-universal decline in output across the 12 monitored UK regions and nations in April, Scotland was one of six areas to experience an upturn in business activity during May.”

He added: “The Scottish labour market demonstrated resilience, with firms adding to their workforce numbers for the first time in six months. Notably, it........

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