Ordinary investors will be awarded ‘bonus’ shares in NatWest Group if they hold onto stock they acquire in the taxpayer-backed bank, under a plan expected to be finalised by ministers later this month.

Sky News has learnt key details of the options being explored by the Treasury for a multibillion pound retail offer of NatWest shares, including a likely £10,000 cap on applications from members of the public.

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, announced in last year’s autumn statement that he would explore a mass-market share sale “to create a new generation of retail investors”.

Since that point, further buybacks by the bank and stock sales by the government have reduced the taxpayer’s stake to around 28% – worth about £7bn at NatWest’s current valuation.

The retail offer will be launched alongside an institutional placing of shares in the bank which could in aggregate lead to the Treasury’s stake falling to as low as 10%, sources indicated this weekend.

If investor demand turns out to be greater than expected, the reduction could be even more substantial, they said.

That would put the government within striking distance of returning NatWest to full private ownership 16 years after the lender was rescued from the brink of collapse with £45.5bn of public money.

This weekend, sources said that options under active consideration by Treasury officials included a minimum investment of £250, to encourage a wide participation in the retail offer.

A ceiling of £10,000 was “likely”, they said, mirroring a 2015 Treasury plan – which was subsequently abandoned – for a retail offering by the Treasury of Lloyds Banking Group shares.

The NatWest offer is also expected to award one bonus share for every ten bought by retail investors and retained for at least a year, the sources added, although they cautioned that final details such as the bonus share ratio and precise investment thresholds could still be amended by officials.

A modest discount to the bank’s prevailing share price will also be applied to encourage take-up.

People close to the decision-making process said that Mr Hunt and Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, were being kept closely informed on the plans.

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Depending upon market conditions, they said an announcement to launch the offer could come in late May or early June.

The green light will be subject to any political turbulence in the aftermath of this week’s local elections, they added.

Shares in NatWest have risen by more than 20% over the last year despite the turbulence surrounding the debanking row involving Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader.

Dame Alison Rose, the bank’s former boss, stepped down last year after it emerged that she had spoken to a BBC journalist about the closure of Mr Farage’s accounts.

She has since been replaced by Paul Thwaite, whose transition from interim to permanent boss of NatWest was confirmed earlier this year.

NatWest also has a new chairman, Rick Haythornthwaite, who replaced Sir Howard Davies at its annual meeting last month.

Mr Farage, who has threatened to launch legal action against the bank, recently declared his fight with the lender “far from over”.

“For a retail NatWest share sale to work – as outlined by Jeremy Hunt in the Budget – investors must have confidence in the bank,” he said.

“My debanking row with them is far from over.

“They acted in a politically prejudiced way against me and then deliberately tried to cover it up.

“Until they provide full disclosure and apologise for their behaviour, why should any retail customer trust them?”

The government’s stake in NatWest has been steadily reduced during the last eight years from almost 85%.

Sky News revealed earlier this year that ministers had drafted in M&C Saatchi – the advertising agency founded by the brothers who helped propel Margaret Thatcher to power – to orchestrate a campaign to persuade millions of Britons to buy NatWest shares.

NatWest, which changed its name from Royal Bank of Scotland Group in an attempt to distance itself from its hubristic overexpansion, was rescued from outright collapse by an emergency bailout that Fred Goodwin, its then boss, likened to “a drive-by shooting”.

A spokesperson for NatWest said “decisions on the timing and mechanic of any offer are a matter for the Treasury”.

A former top Post Office lawyer has been accused of telling the Horizon IT inquiry a “big fat lie” over his knowledge of a bug in the system that could have stopped wrongful prosecutions of sub-postmasters in their tracks.

Jarnail Singh was a senior in-house lawyer and subsequently head of criminal law at the Post Office from 2012.

The inquiry into the Horizon scandal heard he was copied into an email containing a report which identified the glitch in the accounting system but denied knowledge of it for years – despite saving the document and printing it out.

Mr Singh denied the claims by Jason Beer KC, counsel to the inquiry.

Mr Beer said the report was sent to Mr Singh just three days before sub-postmaster Seema Misra’s case began in October 2010.

Ms Misra was eight weeks pregnant when she was handed a 15-month prison sentence after being accused of stealing £74,000 from her branch in West Byfleet, Surrey.

Her conviction was later quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Mr Singh said he “wasn’t made aware” of the report, written by Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins.

Explanation of bug

Mr Beer said it described a bug “that will result in a receipts payment mismatch” and offered an explanation for apparent cases of theft among sub-postmasters.

He added that a file address on the bottom of the document, which included Mr Singh’s name, showed the lawyer had both saved the report to his drive and printed it out only nine minutes later.

He said this proved Mr Singh had lied years later when he denied having advance knowledge of the issues uncovered by a 2013 report carried out by forensic accounting firm Second Sight.

Mr Singh said he also did not know how to save or print documents during his employment at the organisation and had to ask others to do it for him.

Mr Beer accused Mr Singh of telling “a big fat lie” to the inquiry and of having failed to disclose important information to the defence or court ahead of Ms Misra’s prosecution, asking: “You’d known about the bug all along hadn’t you, Mr Singh?”

The lawyer responded: “No, that’s not true.”

Admission of mistakes

He also denied any suggestion of a cover up but admitted that “mistakes were made” in the prosecution of Ms Misra.

Mr Singh said: “I’m ever so sorry Ms Misra had suffered and I am ever so embarrassed to be here, that we made those mistakes and put somebody’s liberty at stake and the loss she suffered and the damage caused which was not what this was about.”

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Following her case, hundreds of people were later wrongly convicted of stealing after bugs and errors in the accounting system, operated by Fujitsu, made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.

There were more than 700 convictions in total, dating back from 1995 to 2015.

Victims not only faced prison but financial ruin. Others were ostracised by their communities, while some took their own lives.

Fresh attention was brought to the scandal after ITV broadcast the drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, prompting government action that aims to speed up the clearing of names and payments of compensation.

Official figures have raised fears of a deepening public sector drag on the the UK’s economic recovery from recession.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that productivity in the public sector, dominated by education and healthcare, deteriorated between the third and fourth quarters of 2023.

It measured a 1.0% decline over the period, leaving the figure 2.3% lower than a year ago and even further away from recovering pre-pandemic levels.

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The gap was put at 6.8%.

Public sector productivity measures the volume of services delivered against the volume of inputs – like salaries and government funding – that are needed to maintain those services.

While the sector has witnessed hits from the impacts of strikes since the end of the COVID crisis, the NHS has struggled to deal with a worsening backlog in many key waiting lists.

Rows over funding have been exacerbated by record levels of long-term sickness.

The official jobless rate stands at just over 4% – around 1.4 million people.

However, the numbers judged to be economically inactive due to poor health are nearing double that sum.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that the issue has added around £16bn to annual government borrowing bills.

Pressures have been reflected in ONS data, with output in both the health and education sectors falling during the fourth quarter of the year – contributing to the country’s recession.

That was despite rising inputs over the period.

Back in March, chancellor Jeremy Hunt used his budget to announce a Public Sector Productivity Plan – with an emphasis on improving technology in the National Health Service (NHS).

Figures next week are widely expected to confirm the end of the recession, with overall output returning to growth during the first quarter of the year.

Recent private sector surveys have painted a rosy picture for the dominant services sector, which accounts for almost 80% of overall output, despite continued pressure on budgets from the impact of higher inflation and interest rates to help cure the price problem.