THE amount of cash the Government will be able to recover when it sells the Royal Bank of Scotland has been cut for a second time this year, with the bank’s share price remaining depressed all summer.

When the Government bailed the bank out during the financial crisis of 2008 it paid 503p a share for a 73 per cent stake, with the share price ending yesterday at 174.4p.

In March the Office for Budget Responsibility cut its estimate of what the Government could raise from selling its stake from £29 billion to £21.5bn. It has now reduced that to £14.8bn.