Watchdog gives damning RBS report to MPS

THE City watchdog has handed over a damning report into RBS’S mistreatment of small business customers to MPS, having decided not to make it public. The Treasury select committee had given the Financial Conduct Authority until yesterday to publish its report into RBS’S Global Restructuring Group, which has been leaked online.

The FCA said it could not meet the committee’s deadline as it needed to give former RBS bosses implicated by the findings a chance to respond – a process known as Maxwellisation. This could take months to complete.

In a letter to Nicky Morgan, the committee’s chairman, Andrew Bailey, the FCA’S chief executive, said it had “not proved possible” to get the consents it says it needs to publish the report. He said that it was “regrettable” that the report had been leaked online, but that did not mean it could be published.

Media outlets including The Daily Telegraph and the BBC have also obtained copies of the report.

The regulator has previously warned that it would be a criminal offence for individuals to publish the report. However Parliament has the legal power to publish without fear of prosecution.

The committee will vote on whether to publish on Tuesday. Mrs Morgan said: “At that meeting, I will be asking members to agree to publish the final, unredacted report under parliamentary privilege as soon as possible.”

Mr Bailey said that the FCA was still working to publish the report and would be seeking “written representations” from individuals named and publish those that it receives, rather than amending the report itself.

The document reveals the full extent of what Clive Lewis, the Labour MP, called “widespread inappropriate treatment” of small firms transferred into GRG between 2008 and 2013, and lays the blame with former bank bosses for chasing profits at the expense of distressed firms.

The report also looked into a recently published internal GRG memo, which encouraged managers to give struggling customers enough rope to “hang themselves”.

An RBS spokesman previously said it would be “inappropriate” to comment on allegations against managers while the FCA was continuing investigations into GRG.