Bankers offered Treasury jobs

DOZENS of redundant bankers are being sought for key roles at the Treasury.

Chancellor Alistair Darling's department is to offer people who lost jobs in the City the chance to take part in rescuing the UK financial sector.

The Treasury needs up to 70 civil servants with banking expertise and will recruit bankers recently thrown out of work.

"Some of them may have suddenly discovered a higher calling to public service," a Treasury insider told the Financial Times.

"We have already had quite a few applications from former bankers.

"We are trying to get more people in because our relationship with the financial sector is going to be critical. These are the foot soldiers, the policy officials, coming in to do the work."

Most recruits will be deployed in the financial services department, which has doubled in size by taking civil servants from elsewhere in Whitehall, but is being boosted by recruitment from outside government.

The financial services department is at the centre of attempts to keep the banking system afloat.

It is responsible for the Government's shareholdings in the partly-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds, and wholly state-owned Northern Rock.