Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the likelihood of recouping the cost to the public purse of the bailout of the Royal Bank of Scotland by planned sale of shares by 2023-24.

At Budget 2018 Government announced an intention to undertake a full disposal of its Royal Bank of Scotland shareholding by 2023-24.

In its Economic and Fiscal Outlook (https://cdn.obr.uk/EFO_October-2018.pdf), the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast the total value of expected proceeds from sales of the RBS shareholding (paragraph 4.208). The OBR also estimate the gross and net cash flows of the financial sector interventions (table 4.44), noting that ‘the economic and fiscal costs of the [financial] crisis would almost certainly have been greater in the absence of these direct interventions to restore the financial system to stability’.