New deal for Borders criticised

the Chancellor of the Exchequer was accused of short changing Scotland’s Borders yesterday, after he announced a multi-million investment for the area in his spring statement.

Philip Hammond revealed the UK government would invest £260 million in the Borderlands Inclusive Growth Deal, building on the “UK government’s commitment to Scotland’s growth deals”.

The Borderlands Initiative brings together the five crossborder local authorities in the south of Scotland and the north of England to promote economic growth and competitiveness in the area.

However, Scottish Labour’s Colin Smyth, said: “The Tories are short changing the south 0 Colin Smyth: ‘Tories short changing south of Scotland’

of Scotland. Had our area been treated the same as other growth deal areas we would have received between £472m and £865m from both the UK and Scottish governments.

“The funding is also spread over ten years across five councils, so it isn’t going to tackle all the significant economic challenges we face.”

The Scottish Government is also investing £85m in the Borderlands. Public finance minister Kate Forbes said it was “disappointing that the Chancellor failed to guarantee that all future EU funding to Scotland – worth over £5 billion in this current EU budget round – will be replaced in full”.

The Chancellor yesterday also confirmed a £79m investment in a new national supercomputer which will be hosted by Edinburgh University. Called Archer 2, it will be five times faster than the current generation of supercomputers and capable of ten thousand trillion calculations per second.

Mr Hammond quipped: “I am told that with the right algorithms it might even be able to come up with a solution to the backstop.”