It was the Sunday Times which broke the news on November 13 of “Osborne’s £50bn plan for growth“. The newspaper revealed that the chancellor had devised a major infrastructure programme funded by private sector money to boost the flagging economy.

It described a “£50bn housing and road-building boom” through harnassing the wealth held by pension fund managers and insurance companies.

The Sunday Times did remark that the plan was a cunning attempt to lever in loads of money without affecting the nation’s balance sheet, as I explained on Thursday. “We will not be changing the government’s capital spending envelope and we will not be issuing new bonds to fund this,” a Treasury source told them.

But the £50bn figure has turned out to be not quite what it seemed. We reveal in today’s FT that Monday’s big announcement revolves around a memorandum of understanding (not a firm deal) between the Treasury and four pension funds and fund managers.

The four groups have £50bn of assets between them; this appears to be where the figure has come from. As yet none of the four* has yet said how much money they will invest in any forthcoming grand plan. If they decide to put in anything – and it is still “if” - it will inevitably be a small percentage of the huge flows of money they manage, given the onus on them to ensure diversification in a wide spread of investments.

* Hermes GPE, the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, the London Pensions Fund Authority and Meridiam Infrastructure

It may seem like an age ago but there was another growth review back in March, which some may have already forgotten.

Not FT Westminster. We’ve been back through the 137 initiatives launched back then to see how they fared. Under our unscientific calculations Vince Cable and George Osborne deserve a B- for their efforts.

Out of the 40 most concrete measures (many of the others were too vague to be measured precisely) there are some 17 which are firmly on track; another 18 which are in consultation still and 3 which are doing badly. Here is our list in full.

Earlier this week Lord Heseltine aligned himself with Vince Cable by signalling his opposition to the Beecroft reforms, which would make it easier to fire workers.

Last night made a speech at the Whitehall and Industry Group where he compared Britain with Germany in terms of their economic strengths, pointedly warning that the Germans have long had an impressive “industrial strategy”: “In terms of industrial policy (in the UK) there are serious deficiencies,” warned the former deputy prime minister.

The Tory peer went on to make a wider argument about how the Germans have not succeeded through deregulation. This is a pointed criticism of many in the coalition who believe that cutting through red tape will provide the solution for economic ills.

“Germany has not succeeded through deregulation. Regulations provide benefits and opportunities for business as well as adding to costs and workload,” he said. Heseltine quoted a McKinsey survey which showed that almost as many companies regarded new laws as positive as those who saw it as negative.

“There have been many deregulation initiatives but I can’t think of one – including mine – that has achieved significant success. There aremany reasons. Modern governments represent sophisticated, self-interested and relatively prosperous electorates who value many of the services guaranteed by regulation,” he said.

“Try tinkering with maternity arrangements when mumsnet gets going in an election campaign.”

Heseltine then claimed that regulations had actually created industries, for example the production of crash helmets.

“Of course I believe that we should get rid of outdated red tape. I welcome the government’s one-in, one-out initiative, but I also think we should be looking at every new piece of regulation and asking if it can be turned into the UK’s industrial advantage.”

To some in the Tory fold this kind of talk is tantamount to heresy; which makes it all the more interesting to hear.

Any idea that the British government could afford to take its eye off Libya was dashed today by news of an imminent report by the United Nations suggesting some 7,000 detainees are being held in the newly liberated country.

The report by the UN secretary-general, Ban ki-Moon, says the prisoners include women and children. There are also many black Africans who have been tortured for their skin colour as suspected Gaddafi sympathisers. The report, due to be published on Monday, suggests that many prisoners have been held in private jails not under the control of the interim government. Prisoners lack access to legal due process and many courts are “not fully operational”

All eyes in Westminster are currently on the economy ahead of next week’s growth review. This report, however, is a reminder to Downing Street of awkward obligations in North Africa which will not go away easily.

I revealed a few weeks ago that the government is considering paying families “cashback” of £150 to take up the Green Deal, the flagship energy-saving scheme. The deal begins in October next year and lets people spend thousands of pounds improving their home insulation; the cost then comes off their (lower) bills gradually over the ensuing years.

I’ve just been told that the Treasury (in the form of Danny Alexander) is about to announce £200m for the project as part of next week’s growth review.

The money is significant and could fund various types of incentive to help the government hit its very ambitious target of 14m homes by the early 2020s. Cashback is the one that we know about; but others – such as rebates on stamp duty or council tax – have not been ruled out either.

Richard Lloyd, executive director at Which?, is among those sceptical about the 14m homes target. (Sainsbury’s offered free insulation to 150,000 staff this summer and only 200 took it up).

He says: “It’s crucial that the Government gets the fundamentals of the Green Deal right. If it’s not good value for consumers overall, short term incentives will not be enough to guarantee that this scheme will be a success.”

The reason the Green Deal matters is that if it is unsuccessful then fuel bills are set to rocket by some £280 a year by 2020: Only by insulating homes – and thereby cutting bills – will consumers achieve the £94 cut in bills heralded in the Commong yesterday.

The outcome of last week’s final quad meeting before next week’s autumn review seems to have resulted in rather a strange compromise.

George Osborne entered the meeting arguing for a freeze in some benefits (not pensions or disability living allowance) to pay for a package of other measures, including tax cuts and action on youth unemployment. But he was met with stiff resistance from Nick Clegg in particular, who didn’t want to punish the poorest by giving them a sub-inflation rise in benefits.

In the end, as we revealed this morning, they agreed that benefits would go up with CPI, as would normally be the case. But the chancellor insisted that money had to be saved somewhere, and the surprising compromise reached would be that it would come from tax credits instead. Treasury officials are now working on how exactly that money will be saved.

Clegg also won his argument that some of the money (£1bn to be precise) should be used to fund a short-term work placement scheme for young people to get access to the jobs market.

George Osborne wants to channel billions of pounds of pension fund money into big infrastructure projects such as rail, road and energy projects.

This is the premise of Monday’s “infrastructure review”, in which the chancellor will update us on progress on getting this big plan off the ground – along with a list of 40 or 50 “top priority” infrastructure schemes which we should see happening quite soon.

The curious thing, however, is that pension funds already pay for infrastructure projects, and not only through PFI schemes. This is because they regularly buy tens of billions of pounds of government bonds (gilts) which are then used to finance general government stuff: including capital investment.

Investors in infrastructure schemes usually expect more income given that risk is perceived as higher than supposedly risk-free gilts (although the Eurozone crisis has put a dent in that concept).

So why would Osborne want to borrow in this more expensive way? Could it be a rather less visible way of accumulating government debt than simply going to the capital markets? That was of course one of the true rationales for the now controversial PFI system.

Here is the government spiel:  The World Economic Forum ranked the UK at just 33rd in the world for the quality of its infrastructure, down from 9th in 2005. The government anticipates that some £200bn needs to be invested in UK economic infrastructure over the next five years, with most of that spent in energy and transport. The coalition believes that previous governments failed to produce a coherent view of the long-term needs for British infrastructure.

Ministers are determined to lever in private sector investment and reduce the cost of capital for projects and programmes – and officials have been working for months on “efficient and effective funding models“. Key to this is encouraging participation by pension funds also overseas sources such as sovereign wealth funds.

In the UK the level of infrastructure investment is estimated to be under 1 per cent of pension fund assets compared to 8-15 per cent in Australia or Canada. Officials and ministers want to change this.

So far, so straightforward.

The key is to lower the cost of capital, which increases as “risk transfer” increases. For example building a toll road is high-risk