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Royal Bank of Scotland has unveiled plans to cut up to 9,000 jobs, including 4,500 staff in the UK, in a shock move immediately branded "truly devastating" by banking unions.

The bank said today that it had began consulting Unite, the biggest union, and other staff bodies, over a job cuts plan that would affect about 5 per cent of the bank's worldwide workforce of about 170,000.

The bank said the cuts would hit its "global manufacturing" division, which consists mainly of administrative or "back office" jobs. It said the cuts, part of a £2.5 billion cost-cutting drive, would take place over the next two years.

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A spokesman said that the cuts would be "all administrative", including in technology, group property, call centres and group purchasing. He said that no customer-facing branch staff would face redundancy. Consultations with unions had begun only recently, he said.

Today's cuts come on top of 2,700 already announced earlier this year. At a stormy annual meeting of shareholders in Edinburgh on Friday, the bank's top executives, acknowledged that fresh job losses were on the cards, but said that it was too early to go into detail.

Stephen Hester, the new chief executive, said today that the job losses were "unfortunate" but were essential if RBS was to regain its strength as an independent bank.

Rob MacGregor, Unite national officer, said: "Unite is appalled that thousands of people, who form the backbone of the RBS operations, are to be made redundant. These employees are totally blameless for the current position which RBS is in, yet they are paying for the mistakes at the top of the bank."

Unions said the government should be acting urgently to defend jobs.

"This bank, which is majority owned by the taxpayer, must not be allowed to shed jobs and leave people on the dole," Mr MacGregor said.

Unite welcomed a commitment by RBS to explore other options for staff to help mitigate the effects of the cuts, which come as the UK experiences its worst recession for 20 years.

"The union will argue for creative solutions to cope during the downturn," Mr MacGregor said. RBS said that it hoped that the eventual number of job cuts would be "significantly lower" than 9,000, arguing that it had already identified 650 new job opportunities.

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