RBS workers on £2,000 a day, email says

The salaries of several thousand contractors who work for the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) have been accidentally leaked by a recruitment agency employee.

An employee for recruitment specialist Hays inadvertently forwarded an email with the remuneration details of around 3,000 contract staff working for RBS, it was reported yesterday.

The details included in the leaked email could prove embarrassing for RBS, which is 82 per cent owned by the British taxpayer since the Government bailed it out at the height of the financial crisis in 2008.

The information contained in the email has yet to be made public, but it has been reported that some contract staff are paid as much as £2,000 a day.

Earlier this month RBS announced that it planned to cut 2,000 jobs, principally at its investment banking subsidiary.

A statement issued by Hays yesterday confirmed that the data had been accidentally released, and said it was working to recover it from recipients.

"We can confirm that confidential personnel data has inadvertently been shared by a contractor working with the Group," an RBS spokesman said. "No customer information has been compromised," the spokesman added.