Taunton MP condemns RBS banker's bonus

Lib Dem Foreign Office minister and MP for Taunton Deane, Jeremy Browne has spoken out publicly,suggesting the RBS banker Stephen Hester should have a moral obligation to turn down his massive bonus of £963000 in shares on topof his annual £1.2 million salary.

Speaking on BBC Question time last night and then again on BBC Somerset today, Mr Browne said: "There are two areas I have big problems with, the cosy capitalist ,'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours', we'll sit on eachothers' remuneration committees and decide  what chaps like us ought to get in order to have the right lifestyle. I think Vince Gove  and the Government is completely right to be starting to take measures to get to grips with that; Labour never did that in 13 years of office."

 "Secondly there is a question of honour  he's already being paid more than  a million pounds a year; he gets paid in about three days what a soldier serving in Afghanistan, risking his life, gets paid in a whole year. He should reflect the on the fact that he is public servant in a bank mostly owned by the public.

" If he wants to leave RBS and set up a business here is Taunton employing 2,000 people that makes him an extremely rich man, I don't have a problem  with that but he has to think like a public servant ,not someone who's there to line their own pocket."

Jeremy said what many of us were thinking, but he did let the side down on Questions Time when David Dimbleby asked him if he thought the Government could use their powers of voting as shareholders to stop the bonus, for some reason he completely avoided the question and rambled on about the bonus pot having got less over the years.