ROYAL Bank of Scotland executives have been accused of misleading Parliament over the lender's mistreatment of small businesses at the hands of its controversial restructuring unit.
Labour's Clive Lewis, who has seen an unredacted copy of the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) investigation into RBS, said it states the bank's behaviour was "systemic and widespread".
The shadow Treasury minister now believes that RBS executives, including chief executive Ross McEwan and chairman Sir Howard Davies, "misled the Treasury Select Committee in their evidence and had a stated policy of misleading members of this House".
The duo were subjected to an hours-long grilling in front of the committee last week, where MPs asked who was ultimately to blame for the failings of behaviour at RBS's Global Restructuring Group (GRG).
Read More: RBS announces stay of execution for 10 closure-threatened branches
The state-backed lender has been dogged by allegations that it intentionally pushed small businesses towards failure in the hope of picking up their assets on the cheap.
"Far from being isolated incidents of poor governance as they claimed to the committee, this report explicitly states their behaviour was 'systemic and widespread'," Mr Lewis said.
He continued: "In one shocking passage of the report out of hundreds the bank boasted one family business was set to 'lose their shirts' so RBS could get a 'chunky equity deal'.
"Furthermore it is clear the summary of the report the FCA has published is what I would politely describe as a sanitised version."
Read More: RBS announces stay of execution for 10 closure-threatened branches
The FCA is still investigating whether to take further action over the unit's actions between 2008 and 2011 after publishing a summary report into GRG last year.
The MP has asked for permission to hand over the leaked full report to the Treasury Committee ahead of its hearing with FCA boss Andrew Bailey on Wednesday.
The committee, chaired by Nicky Morgan, has been pressing the FCA to publish the RBS report in full for months.
A spokesman for the GRG Business Action Group, which represents more than 500 businesses put into financial distress under the division, said: "What Clive Lewis said in Parliament today is extremely worrying and surely makes immediate publication of the FCA report an urgent priority in the public interest.
"In view of the FCA's repeated assurances that it is not favouring RBS, this is a shocking allegation. Andrew Bailey will have to explain himself before the Treasury Select Committee tomorrow.
"We were advised last week that we might still have to wait another six months before the full report is published. In view of Mr Lewis's intervention, that time-frame is surely untenable."
Read More: RBS announces stay of execution for 10 closure-threatened branches
An RBS spokesman said: "The evidence we provided to the Treasury Committee accurately reflected the bank's position. We are not clear on what basis the allegations are being made, but we would strongly deny the suggestion that we misled the committee."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel