Watchdog considers Goodwin knighthood

Published on Saturday 9 May 2009 19:56

AN HONOURS watchdog is to consider whether it should act to strip former Royal Bank of Scotland boss Sir Fred Goodwin, below, of his knighthood.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell said the Forfeiture Committee would "look at" the situation in relation to the former chief executive.

But in a letter to Labour backbencher Gordon Prentice, he stressed that the committee usually only responded to "judgments by the courts or by the appropriate regulatory or other professional bodies".

"I will, of course, put the points you have made to the Forfeiture Committee, which will look at them against the background I have sketched out above and decide whether any action on its part is appropriate," he said.

Dozens of Labour MPs have called for Sir Fred to lose his title, amid anger over his handling of the bank and his 700,000-a-year pension.

Prentice said: "Sir Gus tells me forfeiture normally follows a finding of guilt by a regulatory, judicial or other competent authority on the basis of evidence put to it.

"Sir Fred was the central figure in the collapse of a major Scottish institution.

"In these circumstances, retaining a knighthood awarded 'for services to banking' strikes me as bizarre."

Sir Gus wrote that the Forfeiture Committee "does not have a role in supervising or monitoring the subsequent activities of all those who have been granted honours by the State".

He said in previous forfeiture cases there had been a "clear determination of guilt by the appropriate regulatory, judicial or other competent authority on the basis of evidence put to it".