Royal Bank of Scotland is offering immediate payments to staff who are owed bonuses despite promising the Government that it would not give them cash payouts.

The Times has learnt that RBS, which is 68 per cent owned by taxpayers after a £20 billion government bailout, is offering its staff loans against the bonuses that they are owed but which have been deferred until 2010 under a deal with the Government.

RBS had lobbied hard to be allowed to pay a cash element of the bonuses and critics will see the loan scheme as a way to get around the Government’s refusal to allow it to do so. The bank, which will pay out about £1 billion of bonuses, had agreed to defer about £650 million of that after intense political criticism.

RBS employees who take up the loan offer will be entitled to upfront payments of up to 30 per cent of their bonus, spread over the next three years, with up to 12 per cent available now.

The bank defended the scheme, saying that it was designed to help hard-up lower-paid staff, rather than investment bankers, some of whom are due seven-figure bonuses, payable in three tranches in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

An RBS spokesman said: “When we told staff we were deferring bonuses and abolishing profit share we also wanted to make it clear to staff that we intended to find a way to manage the impact of this on their household budgets. It is chiefly intended to assist the large number of staff in Britain who were expecting bonus amounts of a few hundred or thousand pounds who will not receive anything this year.”

Sources close to the bank also said that it could not be used by highly paid investment bankers because of provisions that allow RBS to claw back their bonuses if their divisions turn out to lose money over the next three years.

“We have yet to finalise the detail of how any such loan would work but it would clearly be relatively small in proportion given the potential for clawback,” the RBS representative added. However, the scheme will outrage small-business organisations that have criticised RBS and other quasi-nationalised lenders for giving priority to loans for their own staff over business lending.

Banks have also been criticised for failing to lend to homebuyers, although RBS says it has increased its overall lending levels to small businesses and individuals since the bailout. Politicians called on RBS to explain the scheme.

Vincent Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said: “RBS must be absolutely clear about exactly how they are paying bonuses to their staff. Taxpayers who have poured billions of pounds into this company will have every right to be angry if there is even the slightest suspicion that the board are trying to pull a fast one. It is quite clear that banks such as RBS may yet need further support including the possibility of full nationalisation, it is therefore not only right but wise that they are whiter than white on how they pay bonuses to their staff.”

The bank posted a message on its intranet on Tuesday from Neil Roden, the human resources director, offering employees a loan. “It is our intention to allow employees to borrow against part of the deferred entitlement on a fully recourse basis in advance of their release,” Mr Roden said.

UKFI, the government body that oversees the part-nationalised banks, is understood to be aware of RBS’s bonus plans.

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