It was Labour’s plan to hold a Commons vote that forced the RBS chief to give up his £1m bonus.{C}
Explaining Stephen Hester’s decision to waive his £1m bonus, RBS was clear that one man was responsible: Ed Miliband. It was Miliband’s plan to force a Commons vote on the issue that prompted Hester’s announcement last night. As one RBS director put it to the BBC’s Robert Peston, it would have been “untenable” for a semi-nationalised bank to defy the will of parliament. Miliband probably would have preferred the row to continue for another week but this is still a significant victory for him. Like his intervention over the BSkyB deal, it is further evidence of his willingness to take on “vested interests”.
For the coalition, which badly mishandled the issue, Hester’s decision will come as a relief. It deprives Labour of an opportunity to inflict further damage on a dithering government. But the saga doesn’t end here. Most bonuses are yet to be announced and Labour’s intervention sets a significant precedent. As Faisal Islam pointed out, the logic of the party’s position is that no one at RBS should receive a bonus of £1m. But around a hundred bankers pocketed that amount or more in 2010. Will Labour now scrutinise RBS pay more widely? The answer from Chuka Umunna on the Today programme this morning was “yes”. He argued that RBS staff “like other public sector workers” should have their pay squeezed and promised to look at salaries “across the board”.
But speaking for the government, William Hague sounded a cautionary note. He warned that politicians were not qualified to comment on “individual decisions” and the “day-to-day running of the banks”. Then again, pointing to David Cameron’s decision to ban cash bonuses above £2,000, he declared: “if we need to do more, we will do more.” With RBS now likely to remain a state-owned institution until 2015 and beyond, both Labour and the Tories will have to think hard about how they ensure its pay is seen as fair in the eyes of the public. The government has every interest in avoiding a repeat of the furore next January.
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