Decision this week on Fred Goodwin honour

The work of the Honours Forfeiture Committee is usually kept under wraps but Prime Minister David Cameron told MPs yesterday he expected it to sit in the coming days.

Political pressure has been mounting for the title awarded to Sir Fred in 2004 for “services to banking” to be withdrawn over his role in the collapse of RBS, which had to be bailed out with £45bn of taxpayers’ money.

Asked when a decision would be made, Mr Cameron said: “The Forfeiture Committee will be meeting, as I understand it, this week.

“And it will be considering all of the evidence including, as I have said before, the Financial Services Authority report into RBS and what went wrong and who was responsible.”

All three main party leaders have backed a rethink, with Mr Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg sympathetic to demands that the honour to be removed.

Labour leader Ed Miliband has explicitly called for the City figure to lose his knighthood and admitted his party was “clearly wrong” to recommend it in the first place.

The committee, chaired by the head of the home Civil Service Sir Bob Kerslake, normally acts only when recipients of honours are jailed or struck off by professional bodies.

The Cabinet Office declined to say when the committee will meet.