UK govt under attack for backing RBS plans to shift jobs to India

The government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown has come under attack for allowing the Royal Bank of Scotland to transfer jobs to India as part of its efforts to cut costs.

Quoting leaked documents, The Daily Telegraph today said the bank, which had to be bailed out and was 70 per cent owned by tax-payers, was moving posts out of Britain to India with the blessing of ministers.

Stephen Hester, the bank's chief executive, had told the staff in Singapore about the cost-cutting plans in February.

The report quoted a transcript in which Hester had said: "I had a meeting with our majority shareholders before Christmas and told them one of our cost-cutting strategies was to continue to reduce jobs in Europe and the United Kingdom, and move to a more efficient location, such as India, and they encouraged me to continue that strategy."

About 8,000 British banking jobs, a substantial number of them in information technology, have been lost to India in the past 18 months.

RBS, bailed out at a cost of £20 billion, announced in April that it was preparing to cut 9,000 staff, including 4,500 in Britain.

David McLetchie, a Tory member of the European Parliament, said Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, was responsible for the government's RBS shareholding and it was "astonishing" that he would back the cuts.

"As the majority shareholder in RBS, the tax payer may benefit from higher profits but the tax payer also picks up the bill for higher unemployment and that is likely to be the consequence," he said.

A spokesman for the bank said Hester's comments were meant to reflect the fact that majority shareholders were supportive of the bank's general business strategy.