Unite slams Lloyds’ decision to cut 5,000 jobs as “corporate arrogance.”

Lloyds Banking Group – part-owned by UK taxpayers – has announced plans to slash 5,000 jobs as part of its continued consolidation following its merger with HBOS in 2008.

The latest figure brings the total number of job cuts announced by the banking group this year to almost 11,000. Following the collapse of the UK financial sector at the end of 2008, Lloyds is now 43%-owned by the UK taxpayer.

Lloyds said that temporary staff will be mostly affected by the decision, but 2,600 permanent jobs would be lost in the UK. It said that most of the cuts will come in its operations unit – which will affect roles in IT, collections and payment services.

Mark Fisher, Lloyds Group Director, said: “We will continue to work closely with our colleagues affected by today’s announcement to help them through these changes over the coming year.”

Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable, blamed the job losses on Lloyds’ takeover of HBOS. He said: “The takeover was a political decision to avoid total nationalism and people are now paying for it with their jobs.

“If we are to have a stable and competitive private banking market, Lloyds Banking Group will have to be broken into several parts when it is eventually re-privatised. It is a terrible irony that many of these job losses are because operations merged in the first place.”

The job cut decision has angered Unite, Britain’s biggest union. Rob MacGregor, Unite National Officer, said: “This [announcement] of 5,000 job losses demonstrates the depth of corporate arrogance within this taxpayer supported bank.

“This country’s financial sector should be looking towards the future, rather than continuing to slash jobs without proper consideration of how to rebuild the public’s confidence in our tarnished banking sector. Today marks the start of another dark week for financial workers.”

This latest news follows announcements by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) last week that it would cut almost 4,000 retail banking jobs across the UK.