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A BANKER who is about to pocket a £2million bonus is also in line for his own bailout – if he fails to sell his £2.85million mansion.

RBS insurance boss Paul Geddes, 41, has put the seven-bedroom house in Merchiston, Edinburgh, up for sale because he is moving to London after winning a promotion.

But a generous relocation package means he doesn’t have to worry about a buyer.

Insiders have revealed RBS, who are 84 per cent owned by the Government, will “help out” if the house fails to sell within a few months.

The revelation prompted anger last night as campaigners contrasted the top banker’s situation with those of ordinary families hit by the recession.

TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign director Emma Boon said the arrangement would infuriate those who were struggling to sell their homes and whose property values had plunged in the recession.

She said: “RBS wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for taxpayers’ money. Until the bank gets itself back into private ownership, it should think very carefully about the perks it’s offering to staff.

“Some of the taxpayers who bailed out RBS have seen the value of their own properties drop so it’s unfair to ask them to pay to insulate the bank’s top dogs from the realities of the property market.”

Geddes has also come in for criticism because he is to pocket a £2million bonus despite RBS Insurance losing £295million in his first full year at the helm.

Last month, they described 2010 as “a disappointing profit year” after posting the huge loss.

The previous year, the bank’s insurance arm – the UK’s biggest personal insurer – had been £58million in profit.

An RBS spokesman said last night the sale of Geddes’s house was a private matter.

He said: “RBS have procedures to assist all members of staff to relocate when required.”

SCOTLAND faces being blighted by massive solar power farms which produce tiny amounts of electricity while sucking up huge cash grants for the companies who build them.

Despite Scotland’s cloudy and wet climate – including snow over the last few days – renewable energy grants raise the prospect of firms trebling the amount they can earn from any ‘green’ energy produced.

The bizarre policy, brought in by the last Labour administration in Westminster, has been heavily criticised for propping up inefficient wind and wave power schemes.

The taxpayer-funded subsidies are so high that foreign firms are said to be looking for cheap land to buy in northern Scotland to set up acres of photo-voltaic panels.

This is despite experts insisting the weather required to run solar panels efficiently makes them “uneconomical” anywhere north of central France.

Dr Alan Owen, who is director of the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Practice at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, is a leading critic.

He said: “It’s ridiculous that taxpayers are paying for photo-voltaics when it’s not really appropriate for Scotland.”

Each Chinese-made solar panel will take up to 20 years to replace the energy it took to ship it to Scotland, it is estimated.

It is thought two new proposals for solar farms around Buchan, near Peterhead, for 350 panels each, will be submitted to Aberdeenshire Council in the next two months.

They come in the wake of five other applications that have been lodged for a total of 2,000 panels on farmland in the area.

Matthew Sinclair, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Providing extravagant subsidy for sources of energy that are hopelessly uneconomic will cost consumers a fortune while the scheme will allow fortunate investors juicy returns.”

A Department of Energy and Climate Change spokesman said it had launched a “rapid review” of the solar sector, adding: “We don’t want large scale solar installations to be claiming money meant for householders, small businesses and communities.”

A KILLER jailed for punching a man to death caused outrage yesterday by winning damages for a delayed parole hearing.

Drunken thug Samuel Sturnham claimed he suffered ­“anxiety and distress” while waiting six months to argue for his freedom.

The parole application was later thrown out.

But a High Court judge in London sparked fury as he granted Sturnham £300 compensation because the delay breached his human rights.

Mr Justice Mitting said he dealt with the case in Britain to save money in the long term.

The alternative was to let the case go to the European Court of Human Rights, which would inevitably grant damages, meaning the cost to British ­taxpayers would spiral.

The judge said: “It does seem to me to be right in this case, where an individual prisoner has suffered anxiety and ­distress as result of unjustified delay by the state, that he should recover modest ­damages.”

Sturnham’s case was funded by the public purse so the final bill for taxpayers is thought to be about £10,000.

Emma Boon, of campaign group the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers want to see their money spent on frontline services, not fighting ludicrous human rights claims from ­dangerous criminals.

“While prisoners should obviously be treated with dignity and respect, human rights laws shouldn’t open the door to a flood of dubious claims.”

The row followed the controversy over the European Court of Human Rights case that could allow violent criminals to vote in UK elections.

Sturnham, 32, was locked up indefinitely for the manslaughter of Christian Noble, 34, at a pub in St Albans, Hertfordshire, in May 2006.

At the time, Sturnham had been released early “on licence” after serving half of a four-month sentence for his fourth drink-driving conviction.

He was fitted with an electronic tag but ignored the ­curfew and went on a drinking binge. After downing 21 pints, he picked a fight with a customer in a pub and Mr Noble tried to break it up.

Sturnham punched Mr Noble so hard, his jaw was broken and he suffered a skull fracture as he fell. He died later in hospital.

He had been due to marry his fiancee, Alexandra Corke.

Sturnham was jailed at St Albans Crown Court in January, 2007, and was told he was up for parole in late 2009.

Due to an administrative error by the Ministry of Justice, his case was not heard until May last year.

The Parole Board turned him down because he still posed a grave risk to the public, the High Court was told.

Philip Rule, representing Sturnham, said the six-month delay had caused “anxiety, distress and frustration” and was a breach of his human rights.

Sturnham’s appalling record behind bars was revealed at the High Court. He is currently at High Down prison in Surrey.

He has been found guilty at prison disciplinary hearings of assaulting another inmate and for brewing “alcoholic hooch”.

Former Metropolitan Police Commander John O’Connor said: “It sounds dreadful and a waste of money but whatever he had done, he is entitled to his hearing. If he has been deprived of it or it has been delayed, he is probably entitled to notional damages.”

Mr Justice Mitting said his ruling would probably result in a “small trickle” of claims rather than opening the “floodgates”.

A FORMER asylum seeker who symbolised Britain’s soft-touch welfare system by living in a £1.2million house at taxpayers’ expense faces jail after yesterday admitting swindling £29,000 in benefits.

Toorpakai Saiedi, 38, originally from Afghanistan, pleaded guilty to cheating the system of tens of thousands of pounds while living rent-free in her huge London home.

The mother-of-seven kept a secret account allowing her to claim £29,000 to which she was not entitled, Isleworth Crown Court was told.

At a previous hearing the single mother appeared in the dock, clutching a Dolce & Gabbana handbag and wearing gold jewellery, to deny four charges of dishonestly obtaining income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit from 2006 to 2009.

Yesterday, she stepped back into court wearing a blue face veil and changed her plea to guilty. The swindler was later warned she could find herself behind bars when she returns for sentencing.

A review is under way to see if she will hold on to the house.

Critics, including a council worker sacked over the size of her claim, condemned the woman for abusing the system that gave her sanctuary from the Taliban.

Saiedi hit the headlines in 2008 when it was revealed that she and her children were claiming £170,000 a year in benefits and their private landlord charged a staggering £12,500 a month rent on their seven-bedroomed townhouse in Ealing. Saiedi claimed asylum after coming to Britain in 2001 with her children, a year after her husband Haji Rahmat Shah Saiedi, 47, had arrived in London. Mr Saiedi later left the family home.

At the time, Saiedi’s son Jawad, then 21 and a student, sparked more fury when he said the family felt like lottery winners and went on to admit spending most of his time driving his Mini Cooper and playing snooker.

News of the massive claim caused huge embarrassment to bosses at Ealing council who sacked three housing officers who managed the family’s claim.

Yesterday Gemma Calliste, 35, who lost her job, said she felt she had been made a scapegoat by her former employers and expressed outrage at Saiedi’s fraud.

She said: “This is absolutely ludicrous. Something must have gone seriously wrong for her to have got away with this for as long as she did.”

Angie Bray, Tory MP for Acton, where the family lived, said: “This case was a double whammy for the taxpayer. The benefits system has to be reformed so money is not used to put people in houses hard-working taxpayers could never hope to afford.”

Charlotte Linacre, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “It’s shocking that this woman has admitted lying to get benefits on top of living in a free million-pound house. This shows the desperate need for welfare reform.”

Health secretary Andrew Lansley must have been confident when he strode to work on No Smoking Day last week that his long-awaited Tobacco Control Plan would attract little criticism.

Tobacco, after all, is an easy target, and smokers – well, who cares about them? They’re just a dwindling minority – deluded, addicted and dirty. No room for them in David Cameron’s ‘big society’.

At 9.30am prompt the Department of Health issued a written ministerial statement. Following months of indecision, the coalition government had finally decided to implement Labour’s tobacco display ban. In addition, Lansley declared, it would “consider” plain packaging.

Traditionally, when tobacco control policies have been announced, the principal opposition has come from two camps – tobacco manufacturers and consumers, the latter represented by the smokers’ group Forest.

In recent years tobacco retailers have fought hard to save their businesses from excessive regulation, but last week I witnessed a significant new development. For the first time in the war on tobacco a genuine coalition was forming that was neither pro nor anti-tobacco. Instead it was pro-enterprise and anti-big government.

It revealed itself with a letter to the Daily Telegraph, signed by the directors and chief executives of several leading think tanks and pressure groups – including the Adam Smith Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies, and the TaxPayers Alliance.

“If the coalition is committed to defeating the enemies of enterprise, as David Cameron, the prime minister, claims,” they wrote, “a good start would be to call a halt to the relentless campaign to ‘denormalise’ smoking through an endless barrage of new controls, directives and diktats.

“Mr Cameron claimed last weekend that he would wage war on bureaucrats who concoct ridiculous rules and regulations. Banning the branding of tobacco products or making cigarettes an under-the-counter product would be yet another victory for these very bureaucrats.”

Dr Helen Evans, director of Nurses for Reform and a signatory to the letter in the Telegraph, said: “Away from all the government’s blather concerning enterprise, freedom and personal responsibility, the illiberal jackboots of the do-gooders are again on the march.”

Agreeing that the government’s measures “are fundamentally illiberal”, Tom Clougherty, executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, added: “It seems to me that tobacco is at the coalface of a much bigger cultural battle, in which capitalism, individualism and rationality are all coming under relentless attack by the enemies of freedom.”

The display ban, said the National Federation of Retail Newsagents (NFRN), is a “betrayal of our nation of shopkeepers”, while the Tobacco Retailers Alliance declared itself “disappointed” by the government’s plans.

The voices of opposition didn’t end there, and many were from traditional Tory voters.

Responding to my article on Conservative Home (‘Whatever happened to the party of business, de-regulation and personal responsibility?’), typical comments included: “Nanny state, just like before!”, “Where’s the ‘change’ we were promised last May? This is just being hit with a different coloured stick”, “As someone who has recently quitted smoking, I can honestly say that government diktats like this actively make me question it.”

For once, Conservative ministers are unable to blame the Lib Dems. In opposition, after all, both parties opposed a tobacco display ban.

Questioned on BBC Radio Five Live last week, the health secretary argued that politicians are allowed to change their minds if there is new evidence. He’s right, but where is the new evidence?

What has happened (apart from public health minister Anne Milton attending the Action on Smoking and Health AGM in December) to justify such a stunning and apparently hypocritical volte-face?

Is it, as one MP suggested privately, just “politics”? In other words, politicians will do one thing in opposition and quite the reverse in power. If that is the case the health secretary has disappointed not only millions of voters but, it could be argued, brought politics into disrepute.

I have never been a member of any political party but ¬- sometimes through gritted teeth – I have always voted Conservative. In May 2010 I couldn’t wait to see the back of Labour. To me Labour were architects of something far worse than the nanny state. Britain had become a bully state.

Adults were no longer being educated to make informed choices about our lifestyle. We were being forced to change through the use of heavy-handed legislation and an increasing number of petty rules and regulations.

David Cameron promised to change that. “Nudge” would replace coercion. The government’s Tobacco Control Plan has nothing to do with nudging and everything to do with coercion. The clue is the target: reducing the number of smokers from 21.2 per cent to 18.5 per cent or less among adults within five years.

Government will do everything it can to achieve that target – including denormalising, stigmatising and marginalising smokers – so that a substantial number of informed adults are forced to give up a perfectly legal habit.

Last night a friend and Conservative party member sent me a copy of a letter she has written to the prime minister. Citing the decision to implement the tobacco display ban as “but one example” that the Conservatives are failing to live up to their billing as the self-styled “party of change”, she notes:

“I am clearly not the only one who is overwhelmed by disappointment. Cases like this merely make it harder for grass roots campaigners such as myself to stand on doorsteps and convince people to get out and vote Conservative.”

Many people, including long-term Conservative activists, are genuinely appalled by the government’s U-turn on tobacco display and its decision to embrace the culture of hyper-regulation that was a hallmark of the previous regime.

Today Andrew Lansley is looking down the barrel of his own shotgun. Sure, he has support from all the usual anti-tobacco suspects. But the coalition against big government (and political expediency) has the potential to derail not only the coalition but the Conservative party itself.

The secretary of state for health should think again.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) has sparked a row by publishing a report detailing the ‘shocking disparity’ in the number of containers councils ask residents to sort waste into.

Container numbers average four per household, but range from one on the Isles of Scilly and Dumfries and Galloway to nine in Newcastle-under-Lyme (although the TPA’s decision to include the kitchen food waste caddy and a bag for textiles in this count is questionable – see article on Newcastle’s system in Resource 54).

Chris Daniel, Policy Analyst at TPA, said: “It’s ridiculous that some councils ask for waste to be sorted into seven bins or more; this places needless pressure on households and isn’t a good way of encouraging recycling… councils can’t send too much to landfill, but plenty of local authorities cope with three bins, so there’s no reason others can’t too.”

The Local Government Association countered that there is ‘no one-size-fits-all solution’, and Friends of the Earth’s waste campaigner Julie Kirby pointed out: “While some people are frustrated by complicated sorting systems, the TaxPayers’ Alliance are missing the point – we don’t need lots of bins to have a good recycling service. In the simplest, cheapest and most effective services the bin men sort recyclables from one or two bins into multi-compartment trucks so householders don’t have to.”

The multi-billion high-speed rail link project that will eventually be extended to Leeds is an “expensive white elephant” and should be scrapped, an alliance of business leaders, politicians and economists have said.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, the 21 signatories dismissed the scheme as an unaffordable “vanity project” that will cost each family over £1,000.

They said it would be wrong to spend in excess of £30million on a “train set that only a minority of fortunate passengers will use”, claiming the money should be pumped into the faltering economy.

The alliance, which includes Lord Wolfson, the chief executive of Next and the Tories’ competitiveness adviser and Lord Lawson, a former chancellor, wrote: “An extremely expensive white elephant isn’t what the economy needs.

“If the Government want to encourage growth, there are better ways to get Britain growing and make us more competitive than getting each family to pay over £1,000 for a vanity project that we cannot afford.”

The government-planned scheme, known as HS2, will see a new 200mph train line connect London and Birmingham and eventually reach to Leeds and Manchester and Glasgow.

Supporters say the link, which will cut through areas of Buckinghamshire and Warwickshire, will generate “massive economic benefits”, but it has faced mass opposition from communities who will be affected by the upheaval.

The group of chief executives, top economists and senior Conservatives said a fast and frequent service to Birmingham and Manchester already existed with trains running at up to 125mph.

They added: “There are better options to increase capacity more affordably and reduce overcrowding more quickly than HS2, which will take decades to complete. Stretched commuter trains and congested roads are a bigger issue than the journey time to London.”

Other signatories included Matthew Sinclair, director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance and Mark Littlewood, the director-General of the Institute of Economic Affairs.

WELSH police forces could face a “mass exodus” of experienced police officers as cuts begin to bite, the Police Federation warned last night.

Forced retirements by forces struggling to balance the books, pension fears and low morale could leave the service with a dearth of knowledge, said the organisation’s Welsh secretary Steve Williams.

His fears were echoed last night by Labour’s Cardiff South and Penarth MP, Alun Michael, a member of the Commons’ Home Affairs Select Committee.

He told the Western Mail: “I am somewhat shocked at the number of senior officers that have already left or are leaving in the next few weeks, which is the first wave of the impact of the cuts.

“This loss of knowledge will be extremely difficult for the police to manage.”

Mr Williams said following the publication of the report by former rail regulator Tom Winsor, which recommended the reduction of overtime and axing of special allowances – a move that could reduce some officers’ annual earnings by thousands of pounds – and Lord Hutton’s recommendation to scrap final salary pensions, “morale is at an all-time low”.

“We do very much see this as a kick in the teeth,” he added.

But Policing Minister Nick Herbert has warned the relationship between police and the public would be damaged if officers were not seen to be taking their share of public sector cuts.

He has said fairness must be at the heart of the reforms, but police forces could not be immune from savings.

Addressing a policing conference in London last week, he said: “Failing to act would place forces in a position where more jobs were threatened than would otherwise be the case if action could be taken in relation to pay. We are simply in a different era now and, frankly, I believe we all know it.”

But Mr Williams claimed experienced officers facing the prospect of working longer for a smaller pension, potentially losing thousands of pounds normally accrued as they near the end of their 30-year service, are likely to leave. “We could potentially see a mass exodus of seasoned, trained police officers leaving the service,” he said.

“I don’t want us to be seen as whining, moaning money grabbers. But this will affect the police service.”

On top of the officers who choose to leave the service voluntarily will be a number who will be forced to retire as they near completion of 30 years service.

South Wales Police and North Wales Police have already signalled their intention to invoke the A19 procedure under the police regulations, which allows them to require officers with three decades of service to retire for reasons of efficiency following the Government’s 20% cut to police funding over the next four years.

The four Welsh forces are expected to shed 1,600 officers and staff over the next four years which, claimed Mr Williams, would be the equivalent of losing North Wales or Dyfed- Powys Police altogether.

“It’s going to be difficult to motivate people with what’s happening,” he said.

“We accept that we are in austere times and it’s right we are being looked at in that regard, but we are being slashed and they are still expecting us to deliver.

“In all my years policing, nothing has caused quite such a storm amongst police officers as the two reports that were published last week.”

Mr Michael said many officers are leaving because they fear the changes that will come with budget cuts.

“These are not people that are bored with the job or just waiting for the moment when they can get out,” he said.

“I am not sure about morale because I think the police are remarkably resilient…”

A spokesman for the Taxpayers’ Alliance said: “The police are notorious for putting needless bureaucracy on officers and that’s the kind of thing that needs to be cut out first to make sure they are out in their communities.”

In Liverpool, a surprising knock-on effect from the massive squeeze on public spending as the authority attempts to deal with a multi-million pound funding gap.

The city’s Daily Post newspaper has discovered that the cuts could lead to an extension of paid-for parking outside of the city centre.

While none of the finer detail has yet been clarified, the council’s regeneration and transport cabinet member Councillor Malcolm Kennedy said city chiefs were facing a £160m backlog of road repairs which must be funded somehow.

The Post reports that another idea under consideration is the creation of more parking spaces on streets which currently have double yellow lines and where the only revenue generated is through fines.

Kennedy told the Post: “We get less from government and we can’t raise it directly from our council tax payers and we have not got the reserves.

“This is not about milking money from people. But apart from the money that comes from the independent passenger transport authority the only money that goes on roads and street lighting comes from parking.

“It’s something we are going to have to consider. It’s in the budget that charges will go up but it has got to be worked out.”

He said there’s also a potential for having charges rather than having double yellow lines everywhere.

Last year when the “parking scrutiny panel” reported its findings it mooted the idea of introducing a charge of around £20 a year for residents’ permits and extending the scheme.

But council leaders including leader Joe Anderson and Malcolm Kennedy rejected the idea at the time. It is not clear whether this proposal – or the idea of charging for parking spaces after 6pm – are now under discussion.

Shadow cabinet member for regeneration and transport Councillor Paula Keaveney said: “It’s accepted that if you want to save front line services then some charges will have to rise. You would have to be rather stupid not to understand the relationship between these two things. But we need to know what the increase would be and what the effect would be.”

Emma Boon, of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, was not impressed. She said: “Councils should be looking at how they can cut spending and save money, not hiking charges and putting more pressure on hard-pressed taxpayers. Working more efficiently, slashing red tape and bureaucracy and cutting wasteful spending can all help.

“In the last decade council tax has almost doubled. It would be unfair if councils tried to plug the funding gap with stealth taxes like extra charges on parking.”

THOUSANDS of public sector fat cats who rake in bigger salaries than the Prime Minister could be in line for bumper “bonuses”, it emerged today.

About 9,000 public servants who earn more than David Cameron’s £142,500 a year will be able to boost their pay packets by tens of thousands of pounds in performance-related pay.

The proposals, contained in a Government-commissioned report, will infuriate hard-pressed taxpayers.

Today’s review recommends that executives in the public sector should have 10 per cent of their pay held back and would receive it only through good performance at the end of the year.

They will include council chiefs, Whitehall mandarins and health service bosses.

The Fair Pay Review also called for greater scrutiny of executive pay in the public sector and recommends that a workers’ representative should sit on remuneration committees.

But the review, led by political commentator Will Hutton, ruled out a fixed limit of senior staff earning no more than 20 times the lowest paid workers’ earnings because it would be unworkable and affect only small numbers. It suggested instead that public bodies should publish a yearly report on how much chief executives earn in relation to the average pay of their workforce.

Mr Hutton said all public sector executives should place at least 10 per cent of their pay “at risk”, to be earned back each year if they achieved objectives.

The scheme would be the first of its kind, affecting about 2,000 senior staff, but could spread to middle managers on a voluntary basis.

Senior staff would not be eligible for a bonus unless they received the part of their pay which had been held back, the report suggested.

The “earn back” system could be in place within four years.

Executives in private businesses are consistently paid more than their public sector counterparts.

The permanent secretary at the Home Office earns up to £197,000, managing a turnover of £10 billion. An equivalent position in the private sector would pay £2.5million.

Chancellor George Osborne said: “The Government is committed to striking a balance between value for money for taxpayers and fair pay for public sector workers. We will give careful consideration to his recommendations.”

Charlotte Linacre, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said salaries had “skyrocketed” at the top of the public sector.

She said: “It’s time that they were brought under control.

“Taxpayers should be able to hold public sector earners to account like shareholders can in companies because they are funded with taxpayers’ money.”

Dave Prentis, general secretary of the public sector union Unison, said: “To boost fairness in the public sector we need to tackle low wages, not just income inequality.

“More than a million public service workers earn less than £7 an hour and many are facing a three-year pay freeze. This will make family budgets impossible.

“Many low-paid public service workers already struggle with heavy debt.”

PARKING charges are likely to rise and restrictions be extended as Liverpool City Council attempts to deal with its multi-million pound funding gap. The authority’s budget for the next year – which will see £91m worth of cuts – warned of the move which the Post understands could mean extending paid-for parking out of the city centre.

While none of the small print has yet been decided, council regeneration and transport cabinet member Cllr Malcolm Kennedy said city chiefs were facing a £160m backlog of road repairs which must be funded somehow.

The Post understands another idea under consideration is the creation of more parking spaces on streets which currently have double yellow lines and where the only revenue generated is in fines.

Cllr Kennedy said: “We get less from government and we can’t raise it directly from our council tax payers and we have not got the reserves.

“This is not about milking money from people. But apart from the money that comes from the independent passenger transport authority the only money that goes on roads and street lighting comes from parking.

“It’s something we are going to have to consider. It’s in the budget that charges will go up but it has got to be worked out.

“There’s also a potential for having charges rather than having double yellow lines everywhere.”

Last year when the “parking scrutiny panel” reported its findings it floated the idea of introducing a charge of around £20 a year for residents’ permits and extending the scheme.

But council leaders including leader Cllr Joe Anderson and Cllr Kennedy rejected the idea at the time. It is not clear whether this proposal – or the idea of charging for parking spaces after 6pm – are now under discussion.

Shadow cabinet member for regeneration and transport Cllr Paula Keaveney said: “It’s accepted that if you want to save front line services then some charges will have to rise. You would have to be rather stupid not to understand the relationship between these two things. But we need to know what the increase would be and what the effect would be.”

But Emma Boon, of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “Councils should be looking at how they can cut spending and save money, not hiking charges and putting more pressure on hard-pressed taxpayers. Working more efficiently, slashing red tape and bureaucracy and cutting wasteful spending can all help.

“In the last decade council tax has almost doubled. It would be unfair if councils tried to plug the funding gap with stealth taxes like extra charges on parking.”