Scottish Labour has today called on the First Minister to break his silence on the £963,000 bonus awarded to Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester.

Labour Shadow Treasury Minister, Cathy Jamieson MP, said:

“Alex Salmond’s silence on Stephen Hester’s vast bonus is deafening.

“The longer he keeps quiet the more people will think he, just like David Cameron, is desperately out of touch with hardworking Scottish families that are feeling the squeeze.

"Let’s not forget that Alex Salmond – a former RBS employee – backed the deal that broke the bank, has criticised ‘gold-plated’ regulation and actually pledged a ‘light-touch’ regulatory system for Scotland. 

“On an issue as important as this, people deserve to know where the First Minister stands. They also deserve to know who and how banks would be regulated in a separate Scotland.

“Nobody doubts that Stephen Hester has done some important work at RBS, but a bonus on this scale shows David Cameron’s promises about reining-in excessive bonuses at state-owned banks have proven to be entirely meaningless.” 

Scottish Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Ken Macintosh MSP, said:

“If you genuinely believe in a fair society, a state owned bank that has been rescued by hard-pressed taxpayers should not be dishing out million pound bonuses like this.

“Most people find a bonus of this magnitude offensive and have said so, which makes Alex Salmond’s silence even more telling.

“It is not just bankers’ bonuses, the SNP still haven’t told us how Scotland would regulate the banks or influence interest rates if it was to separate off from the rest of the UK.

“The SNP want all the levers of power but they refuse to tell us what they will do with them.”

27 January 2012