Finance firms axe thousands of jobs

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The job cuts led to calls for the Government to take more urgent action to help people being made redundant.

HSBC, Legal & General and RBS cut more than 3,000 jobs between them, leaving workers reeling at the scale of the cull.

A row erupted after HSBC initially announced that 1,200 jobs would be cut, but Unite said the true figure was 2,900, including 500 affected by work being offshored to India.

Derek Simpson, the union's joint leader, said: "To slash 2,900 jobs demonstrates the insincerity of the claim by HSBC to be the world's local bank. This decision will ravage a number of local communities as sites are closed and other work is sent abroad."

HSBC, which has around 58,000 staff in the UK, said job losses would hit backroom areas such as IT and human resources rather than frontline employees in branches - 280 jobs would be axed at the Leamington Spa processing centre, 90 in Newport, south Wales, and 150 in London.

The job losses follow a cut of 1,100 employees at HSBC's investment banking division - including 500 UK staff - last September.

Meanwhile, Legal & General said around 10% of its life and pensions workforce would go this year after it reported a £1.5 billion annual loss. L&G said the UK job cuts - out of a 6,500-strong division - would mirror similar levels last year, when it cut its headcount by 10%, adding that the figure included 450 job losses announced last month.

Andy Case, of Unite, said staff were "angry and disappointed" at the news, adding: "This figure of 10% would appear to represent an additional 200 job losses on top of the 450 announced last month. It is unacceptable that staff will learn of these job losses in the media, rather than from their employer."

And banking giant RBS added to the gloom by cutting almost 100 jobs from its business dealing with personal loans, based in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. Unite said it would not accept staff being sacrificed to compensate for "failures" at the top of the organisation.