AN influential group of MPs branded as “disgraceful” the findings of a report into the Royal Bank of Scotland’s mistreatment of small businesses – as they used parliamentary privilege to publish the controversial dossier.

The Treasury Select Committee (TSC) said there was “overwhelming public interest” in publishing the global restructuring group (GRG) report after it was widely leaked online and through social media.

The committee had ordered Andrew Bailey, the head of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), to publish the document on the banking giant’s much-criticised restructuring arm earlier this month. However, he said the release “proved impossible” for legal reasons.

RBS has been dogged by allegations that GRG intentionally pushed small businesses towards failure in the hope of picking up their assets on the cheap. TSC chairwoman Nicky Morgan said: “The findings in the report are disgraceful. The overarching priority at all levels of GRG was not the health and strength of customers, but the generation of income for RBS, through made-up fees, high interest rates, and the acquisition of equity and property.

“The committee has not taken the decision to publish lightly. Normally, reports prepared under section 166 [of the Financial Services] Act are confidential, but there is overwhelming public interest in bringing transparency to what happened at GRG, given the earlier leak of the report, and in ensuring everyone can see, and know that they are seeing, an authentic and verified copy of the original report.”

Promontory Financial Group’s report found that there was “widespread inappropriate treatment of customers” inside the GRG unit. However, it said there was no evidence that “defaults were engineered to transfer businesses to GRG simply to generate revenue for RBS through fees”. It said the failings were not “one-off errors of staff” at an institution “under significant pressure”, but were sparked by GRG governance standards falling short.

The release follows the publication of previously undisclosed memos last month showing GRG staff being encouraged to apply pressure and extract money from customers.

One memo, entitled Just Hit Budget! – written in 2009 – talks of applying high interest rates which could then be reduced if customers signed over a stake in their business or property, and detailed how staff sometimes “need to let customers hang themselves”.

An RBS spokesman said the report made for “very difficult reading” and that the bank was “deeply sorry” that customers did not get the experience they should have done. He added: “Although the most serious allegation – that we deliberately targeted otherwise viable businesses in order to distress and asset-strip them for the bank’s profit – has been shown to be without foundation, we know that the bank got a lot wrong in how it treated some customers.”

The bank added: “The culture, structure and way RBS operates today have all changed fundamentally since the period under review and we have made significant changes to deal with the issues of the past, including how we treat customers in financial distress.”

The FCA was heavily criticised for “completely” losing control of the review when it was leaked.

Incoming FCA chairman Charles Randell told the FCA yesterday that the handling of the RBS report was a question for the board under its current chairman, but he would assess how cases are treated in the future.

He said: “It must be my first priority when I arrive at the FCA to conduct my own assessment of, I think, not just the RBS GRG report, but the background to all of the cases where there has been, as I say, this very obvious tension between public expectations and the expectations of the TSC and what the FCA has felt able to deliver.”