SO William Hague thinks we should all work harder to revive our faltering economy.

Mr Hague is one of the more impressive members of this Coalition Government; he is not a posh boy, he lacks the displeasing mixture of arrogance and peevishness that characterises some of his colleagues, and he has embarked on a crucial quest to raise Britain's profile in the all-important emerging economies, particularly less obvious ones like Turkey, Mexico and Vietnam. But he does not have the right to tell us to work harder when his own Government has not been working anything like proficiently enough at what it urgently requires to do.

The perception of some people in the world's fast- growing emerging economies is that the British, like most Europeans, are becoming work-shy. Maybe, but there are still plenty of people who are working very hard indeed in the UK, and many of them are not being supported or helped anything like enough by Mr Hague's colleagues. Take the most pressing problem of all, the lack of credit. I know some excellent small businessmen, working all hours, who would love to grow their businesses and hire new staff, but simply cannot do so because they cannot get the credit they need.

This points to a problem which Mr Hague and his colleagues have done little to address. Our economy isn't growing because our bankers are not doing what they should be doing; eminently creditworthy enterprises, small businesses, even hard-working households, find it difficult if not impossible to get the lending they require. Without that lending our economy will continue to stall, to flatline at best.

Our banks won't lend because they are paralysed by fear. They still award the wrong employees with absurd and offensive levels of remuneration, yet they will not or cannot come clean about their remaining toxic liabilities. There is still nothing like enough transparency. Meanwhile they are failing to undertake one of their base functions, which is lending to the right people and the right enterprises. They are trapped in a noxious nexus of greed and fear, and they are not even lending to each other. In short the banks are holding back Britain rather than helping it to revive.

Here we have the biggest single challenge facing the Coalition, but I'm not aware that George Osborne, Vince Cable or Danny Alexander, the three key ministers in this area, are addressing it. Maybe they lack the political will to get their sleeves rolled up and take on the bankers and their vast, malfunctioning businesses.

Back to Mr Hague. I'm sure he understands that real growth will be largely dependent on the efforts of the private sector, while the Government is in charge of the public sector. But that does not let the Government off the hook. It can still do much to assist the private sector. Entrepreneurs and businessmen, who have the ability to grow the economy, don't need patronising lectures about working harder.

To be fair, the Government is helping by reducing corporation tax, but that is less important than the need for more readily available credit. The banks are failing the business sector.

Employers would also like better potential recruits, which raises the vexed question of education standards. I accept that our schools are not there simply to churn out model employees, but employers do complain about school leavers who are not literate or numerate. To be fair to the previous Labour Government, it spent lavishly on education, yet the outcomes seem disappointing. Meanwhile there is something of a gap, perhaps even a void, between educationists and employers.

So there are crucial tasks for the Government. Not so long ago Prime Minister David Cameron, peeved by complaints from the top brass, told his generals that they should do the fighting and he'd do the talking. Like most politicians, Messrs Cameron and Hague are good at talking. What they and their colleagues should now do is talk less and, dare I say it, work harder at what really needs to be done.