Forget how Ken Lewis is likely to fare at Bank of America's annual meeting in North Carolina tonight.

The real question of the moment is whether Sir Fred Goodwin did actually employ a flunky to ensure cash machines at Royal Bank of Scotland HQ only dispensed banknotes bearing his signature, as alleged by Treasury Minister Lord Myners in the House of Lords last night

Unlike English banknotes, which are signed by the chief cashier of the Bank of England, Scottish banknotes are signed by the chief executive of one of the three issuing banks — Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Scotland and Clydesdale.

Myners said: “I have been advised that in the RBS's headquarters in Gogarburn, Sir Fred Goodwin employed somebody whose sole job was to ensure that banknotes dispensed from automated telling machines in that headquarter's building bore his signature and his signature alone.”

Myners has been embroiled in controversy for months now over whether or not he approved Goodwin's £703,000 a year pension deal when he quit last autumn. But last night's claim takes the level of animosity between the two men to new depths.

A senior RBS spokesman described Myners' claim as “ever more fanciful” and an “amusing addition” to the spat between the two men.

But the tale bears all the hallmarks of Goodwin's reign at RBS and in particular his obsession with the £350 million headquarters built to his own specifications.

Previous claims include that of his ordering the hall outside his office to be re-papered with wallpaper costing £1,000 a roll after a single tiny stain appeared and of flying fresh fruit in daily from Paris.

Lord Newby of the Liberal Democrats said that although Goodwin was no longer signing banknotes he was “still receiving them in copious quantities”, and he asked Myners if the Government was pursuing any legal course against Goodwin to try to “slow his personal money supply”. Myners replied that he was still consulting his lawyers.