Bank with no compass still losing its way

AFTER being saved from collapse with a £45 billion taxpayer-funded bailout, the Royal Bank of Scotland should expect to be subjected to the strongest possible scrutiny.

In return, the public should expect the bank to undertake the best possible practices.

Yet despite the debt RBS owes the British people, it continues to act in ways which frustrate and infuriate.

Branch closures have made day-to-day banking unnecessarily difficult for many customers, while the outsourcing of jobs overseas does nothing to improve an economy the bank once almost destroyed.

The Scottish Mail on Sunday today reveals that as RBS plans to sack 800 workers and close a further 162 branches, it is hiring hundreds of new staff in India where, for just £2,700 a year, staff will be expected to work from noon to 9.30pm, five days a week.

Even by the standards of Indian wages, the RBS offer to local workers looks like an insult.

On Tuesday, RBS chief executive Ross McEwan appears before Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee to answer MPs’ questions about the closure of branches.

He can expect to be questioned about RBS’s tactic of sacking British staff and replacing them with cheap labour overseas. Some MPs may take an appropriately dim view of the practice.

It is certainly true that the taxpayer should expect RBS to be run efficiently, but the relentless pursuit of profit must not be the sole concern of the management team.

When RBS almost went under a decade ago, it was because those at the top had lost their moral compass.

They chased only money and gambled so recklessly in their pursuit of it that, without the intervention of the Government, the bank would have imploded, taking with it the savings of ordinary people across the UK.

Now RBS owes taxpayers a great deal. Part of its repayment should come in the form of it adhering to the highest ethical standards.