MP fury at banker's £½m pension

Published on Thursday 7 May 2009 22:07

AN MP hit out yesterday at the "scandalous" £500,000 pension of Sir Fred Goodwin's deputy at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Labour's Jim Devine called for a debate on the pensions of retiring bankers from organisations part-owned by the government. The last member of Sir Fred's failed top team – deputy chief executive Gordon Pell – is set to leave RBS with a 517,000-a-year pension.

Commons Leader Harriet Harman said the RBS pensions were decisions taken by the board before the government became a shareholder. But she pledged that for any bank part-owned by the government, there would be "no excessive pensions" and "no rewards for failure".

During Commons exchanges on upcoming business, Mr Devine said: "I know you share my concern about Sir Fred Goodwin going away with over 700,000. Yesterday we learned that Mr Pell, again one of the bankers who drove RBS into the ground, is going to walk away with a pension of over 500,000 a year.

"It would take the average nurse 20 years to earn that kind of money. It's an absolute scandal and instead of walking away with pensions of 1.2 million, we should have sacked them."

Ms Harman said the Financial Services Authority (FSA) was looking into the issue of corporate governance, including "financial remuneration at the top, which has in the past rewarded risk-taking not to mention greed".

She told Mr Devine: "The particular RBS pensions that you have mentioned ... were decisions taken by the RBS board before the government became a shareholder.

"But ... we make it absolutely clear there are to be no excessive pensions and there are to be no rewards for failure."