Lord Myners finally came before the Treasury Select Committee this morning to answer for his role in the Sir Fred Goodwin pension saga. John McFall asked Myners if he had been misled or negligent. Myners pleaded “neither”, but his answers did not support that claim and were totally inconsistent with what he has said in the past. They also highlighted the government’s reckless approach to the bailout negotiations; an approach which ignored all necessary scrutiny.
Myners recalled the tumultuous weekend of 11th-12th October 2008, when he met RBS’s directors to negotiate the first banking bailout. On the evening of Saturday 11th, it became clear that the directors had decided to replace Sir Fred Goodwin and Myners was informed that the pension arrangements “had already been decided” upon. Myners told the committee that he urged RBS’s representatives that “there should be no reward for failure and costs of departure should be minimised” but that his ministerial responsibilities were to arrange a bailout, not to scrutinise RBS’s executive pension scheme.
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