NICOLA Sturgeon will today (Tues) put tackling inequality at the heart of the Scottish Government's latest economic strategy.
The First Minister will highlight a report from the OECD saying the rising gulf between rich and poor has hindered the UK's growth potential.
A new analysis by the Scottish Government claims UK GDP would have been £100billion higher by 2010 as a result.
Ms Sturgeon said: "Our Economic Strategy will set out a long term vision based on one fundamental principal: by becoming a fairer society, we will also become a more productive and more prosperous society.
"We want to see economic growth that is inclusive, innovative and fairly distributed.
"For too long, our economy has been held back by rising inequality as a result of successive generations of Westminster economic policy."
Ms Sturgeon has set out long term plans to close the attainment gap in schools and ensure women have access to top level jobs.
She added: "I have been clear that a key priority for this Government is to tackle the blight of inequality, which serves as a destructive social and economic spiral.
She said the UK Government's austerity measures had compounded its failure to tackle inequality."
Ms Sturgeon and Deputy First Minister John Swinney will launch the government's economic strategy during a visit to a telecoms company in West Lothian.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article