Outside of wartime, no UK Chancellor of the Exchequer has had such an ominous international background to a Budget, or had such a mountain of domestic economic woes to conquer.  Only his most committed political enemies will fail to appreciate the pressure on George Osborne as he gets to his feet in the House of Commons on Wednesday.  In terms of public perception, the Etonian wallpaper heir has low expectations on his side. But never mind the personality and politics, can he spring some credible surprises to hasten the UK along a path towards jobs and growth? The Treasury has already pre-leaked the move  from rescue to reform  in the Budget announcement, but there is a pressing need for measures that clear the way for business to employ more people and sell more goods and services at home and overseas. Everything else is secondary.  Or, as Liz Cameron of Scottish Chambers of Commerce puts it:  We are looking for the Government to provide a clear road map  to growth to accompany the necessary reductions in public-sector spending which are well documented and understood.  Well documented and understood they may be, but there are large and well-organised forces afoot to whom reductions are neither necessary nor acceptable. If Osborne wishes to be remembered as a successful Tory chancellor he must defeat their arguments by conjuring  credible growth-inducing rabbits from his hat.  The Coalition Government needs to show political courage and thinking for the long term   also known as leadership. any display of this quality will show up his Holyrood counterparts, whose response to the crisis has been to offer more free sweeties to the electorate in a race to the bottom of political credibility.  To Iain McMillan, director of CBI Scotland, the Chancellor s task is to provide business with  respite and inspiration . as he sees it the Budget must decisively move the UK beyond reliance on consumer credit cards, financial services alchemy, and politically directed dollops of taxpayers  cash.  Lest we forget, McMillan points out that the UK Government is borrowing ?149 billion this financial year, the largest amount in peacetime, and is committed to adding to the national debt mountain for several years to come.? annual interest payments on the national debt are already ?43bn this year and will rise to ?63bn in the next five years, around double the current budget of devolved Scotland.  The gap between the State s spending and its revenues must be closed   and fast, McMillan said in a speech last week.  about ?50bn of the deficit will go as economic growth increases the tax yield and the costs associated with recession come down. But the remaining annual deficit of nearly ?100bn is structural.? It will not just melt away, and that is the extent to which the cost of the UK s public services exceeds our ability to pay for it   [it] has to be tackled, or it will shackle our economy for many decades to come.  ?For the CBI and other business lobbyists next week s Budget is all about freeing up UK business to compete internationally, by fulfilling the Coalition s promise to make Britain s corporate tax system the most competitive in the G20. Given that the banks are not lending, then it is retained profits that will fund future investment plans. Plans for reducing the headline rate and smaller firms rates of corporation tax will therefore be welcome.  Osborne is under pressure to find ways of encouraging the public sector to make export finance more accessible to small firms   an approach pioneered in Scotland with the ?7.5 million Scottish Chambers of Commerce collaboration with Scottish Development International on the Smart Exporter programme.  Other CBI wishes include reforms to the unfair dismissal laws that discourage recruitment, and signposts towards the eventual reduction in the 50p income tax rate, politically symbolic rather than fiscally beneficial, and with no positive effect on jobs, business formation, growth, international investment or recruitment.  With Scotland s private-sector job figures, revealed on Friday, showing private-sector employment growing faster than public-sector lay-offs, the future reputation of Osborne s epoch-defining Budget will stand or fall on the degree to which it is seen as  a Budget for jobs .  according to Graeme Smith, the general secretary of the STUC, a deficit dove who regularly invokes the shadow of Mrs Thatcher:  The Chancellor must decide whether he is content for unemployment to remain high for longer than is necessary, thereby repeating the mistakes of past recessions.  The Budget must include measures to boost job creation and provide effective help to the  unemployed. a reversal of the  VaT increase would be a good  place to start.  although not impossible   the Czech government has just moved back from 20% to 17.5%   a UK reversal of VaT is a forlorn hope, even in the case of fuel, advocated by the Labour party. Ministers claim cutting the VaT on just fuel would be illegal under EU rules, however politically popular it might be.  as recent price hikes are estimated to have increased the cost of a litre of fuel by 3p and oil prices are likely to stay high due to uncertainly in the Middle East, Osborne may well decide to cancel the planned fuel duty increase, rather than introduce the automatic  fuel duty stabiliser , which raises and lowers fuel duty in line with prices, but which would prove complex  to administer.  Complexity, whether in the tax or regulatory system, is scheduled for a rhetorical pasting from Osborne on Wednesday, not least because as a theme it is full of opportunities to remind the nation of the devil-in-the-detail Budgets that Gordon Brown unveiled year after year.  Given the hints that Osborne and his team intend to be bold, we could conceivably see a complete merger of income tax and national insurance, as recommended by the Office of Tax Simplification.  Small businesses would welcome the reduction in the administrative burden, particularly on businesses employing fewer than 10 people, on whose capacity to employ more people rests any hope for a future marked by public-sector job cuts.  according to the OTS:  The integration of income tax and national insurance, including reducing the differential between rates applicable to different incomes and legal forms, could, for example, remove much of the pressure on the employment and self-employment boundary and should result in [burdensome avoidance systems] becoming obsolete.  If the pre-briefing is to be believed, Osborne is minded to fall in with Sir James Dyson s call for  an enhanced R&D tax credit  to encourage UK firms to spend more on research and innovation.  Measures to boost small business and start-ups might also include plans to extend tax breaks to business angels, by expanding the current Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS), which offers 20% tax relief for investments up to  ?500,000 in companies with less than ?7m in gross assets and fewer than 50 employees.  The CBI has recommended that the scheme be widened to offer more relief, a higher investment ceiling, or to permit the inclusion of larger companies. The point would be to encourage more business-angel  activity, and perhaps to encourage more overseas   particularly US   venture-capital companies to invest in British start-ups.  Ian Williams, aberdeen-based chairman of accountants Campbell Dallas, is hopeful of changes to the EIS that would work in favour of Scotland s burgeoning renewables sector.  I have