Paying back the taxpayer might also help RBS with its stickiest issue: how can it justify paying £1.3bn bonuses to its investment bankers after being bailed out with £45.5bn of taxpayer money and being 84pc state-owned? Sir Philip last week admitted to the BBC that it is "difficult to defend the massive differential" between bankers' pay and that elsewhere in the economy. But, as Hester has stressed, RBS is "a part-prisoner of the market".Repaying the Government from profits largely generated by the investment bank would be the clearest proof yet that the unholy alliance of a state bank awarding outrageous bonuses is, perversely, in the country's best interests. It would relieve some of the political pressure on Hester and his team.