My parents think I’m paid too much, says £10m RBS boss Stephen Hester

The multi-millionaire boss of Government-owned Royal Bank of Scotland told MPs today that even his own parents think he is paid too much.

Stephen Hester, who stands to land a £10 million bonus if he can rescue the collapsed lender, admitted that bankers had invited public anger by paying themselves too much.

In words that are certain to inflame the debate over bonuses for City financiers, the 49-year-old told the all-party Treasury select committee: "If you ask my mother and father about my pay they'd say it was too high as well, so some people close to me have that view of bankers."

His mother is a psychotherapist while her husband is a semi-retired chemistry professor at the University of York.

Their son, who owns a home in Holland Park, a 350-acre estate in Oxfordshire and a chalet in the Swiss ski resort Verbier, went on: "There have been significant instances of pay which have been hard to justify and I completely understand the public interest in that and the political interest in that."

The successor to the disgraced Sir Fred "The Shred" Goodwin, whose disastrous decisions drove RBS to the brink of insolvency in October 2008, added: "All I ever said about my pay is that I would be content to take whatever was the going rate."

The £10 million will be paid out if RBS, which is 84 per cent owned by the taxpayer, hits certain financial targets ahead of privatisation.

But committee chairman, Labour MP John McFall, who branded Mr Hester "the UK's most highly paid public servant" said "the sheer scale of the package is out of sync with what is happening out there".

The RBS chief is one of the richest men in the country having earned tens of millions of pounds in bonuses in the Eighties and Nineties.

His admission will draw comparisons with the words of another bank boss who slipped up before the Treasury select committee.

In 2003 the then chairman of Barclays, Matt Barrett, told Mr McFall that he never borrowed money on credit cards because they were too expensive.