December 17, 2009 - By BNP News

The Treasury does not regard it as a “priority” to pay back the billions pumped into the banking sector, the Treasury has announced — while the bailed-out banksters continue to pay themselves vast bonuses courtesy of the public purse.

According to reports, Sir Nicholas Macpherson, permanent secretary at the department, told the Commons public accounts committee “there were other measures of success beyond just ensuring taxpayers did not lose billions of pounds.”

His remarks directly contradict Chancellor Alistair Darling’s earlier claims that the taxpayers would ultimately end up earning money for the public purse out of the estimated minimum £850 billion bailout.

The shocking comments mean that the Treasury does “not believe the success of the bailouts of Northern Rock, HBOS and the Royal Bank of Scotland should be made simply on the basis of profits,” Sir Nicholas said.

Questioned over the £107 million for financial advice spent by the Government over the bailouts, Sir Nicholas said he “would not apologise.

“£100 million was a very, very small sum in relation to the losses that banks had been making. I actually think the amount we have spent on advisers is good value for money for taxpayers.”

Meanwhile, the banksters show no signs of bowing to public pressure to stop the bonus payouts, even though they are funded directly from taxpayer injections.

The Royal Bank of Scotland, for example, which is now 70 percent owned by the state, recently awarded £1.5 billion in bonuses for senior staff.

Even Barclays president Bob Diamond admitted in an unrelated news report that banks had done a “pretty poor job” of handling the bonus process.

“We [the whole banking sector] have done a pretty poor job of managing how the [bonus] process works. We do agree that many functions should have a higher portion of fixed and a lower portion of variable,” Diamond said. “Clearly there were mistakes made and I’ve made mistakes.”

RBS earlier denied its board planned a mass resignation over pay as it won overwhelming support to enter a state insurance scheme for bad debts.

Shareholders, excluding the Treasury, voted by more than 99 percent to allow the bank to join the Government’s asset protection scheme (GAPS). The Treasury-backed scheme will act as a large insurance scheme to provide the bank with a buffer against £282bn of its bad debts.

The taxpayer’s stake will rise to 84 percent from 70 percent once a Treasury injection of £25.5bn is ploughed into the bank to increase its capital, with £8 billion more available if needed.

And the banksters still continue to pay themselves bonuses. . .