REDUNDANCIES at Royal Bank of Scotland as a result of a plan to close 52 branches in Scotland will be greater than the number that bankers admitted to MPs yesterday, according to Unite.

RBS managing director for personal finance Jane Howard claimed that “the maximum number of compulsory redundancies will be 12.”

But Unite’s regional officer Lyn Turner, who attended the Commons meeting, told the Star that the number would be “over 200.”

MPs on the Scottish affairs committee accused RBS top brass of “losing community responsibilities” in planning to close scores of bank branches while expecting to make £3 billion profit this year.

RBS chief executive Ross McEwan gave an assurance that there would be no more branch closures in Scotland “until at least 2020.”

But Mr Turner told the Star after the committee meeting: “That doesn’t mean that there will be no more redundancies in Scotland until 2020.

“Things that were said today were not reflective of what’s really happening on the ground.

“It will only cost the bank £9.5 million [a year] to stop these closures. It will continue to turn its back on local communities. Clearly the bank is not interested in that.”

In a statement, Mr Turner said: “The chief executive today tried to defend the indefensible. His version of the facts is totally different from ours.”

And he criticised the committee for its failure to challenge the RBS executives over claims that online banking would plug the gap.

“I’m disappointed that the committee never touched on the TSB debacle a couple of weeks ago,” he told the Star.

“Online banking can go wrong pretty quickly and, when it goes wrong, it will affect millions upon millions of people.

“What the bank failed to address today is that there are over two million people in Scotland that still don’t do online banking, so how are the bank going to address those individuals?”