Failed bankers to pocket more taxpayer millions

One of the world's worst megabanks, RBS, has sacked 20,000 staff since 2009 and is planning to lay off many more. Yet two of its bosses still want to pay themselves end-of-year bonuses of over £11m. Half a billion more is going to their colleagues.

British taxpayers own 83% of the disastrous bank, since they bailed it out in 2009 after its executives' gross incompetence helped spark the current financial crisis. Britain has already lost £17.6bn on the deal, and RBS's share price is 40% lower than it was six months ago.

Yet despite promises to crack down on executive pay, David Cameron, the British prime minister, says he can't intervene. The share and salary deals were done with RBS CEO Stephen Hester and international banking chief John Hourican in 2009, before Cameron's Conservative party came to office. The bonus pool for all the RBS execs has apparently been reduced to a mere £500m after an intervention by UK Financial Investments, the government body overseeing its shareholdings in rescued banks.

But this does not go far enough. A former government spokesman on finance, Lord Oakeshott, said yesterday: "Where a business has clearly failed and is being run down, you would not expect the person in charge to be receiving millions in bonuses. This is exactly the sort of case where Cameron should stop talking in generalities. This is the most glaring failure of corporate governance."

Take action: Let's tell David Cameron he must act: taxpayer's money should be spent on loans to help people and businesses, not bonuses for the already disgustingly rich.