Chancellor Alistair Darling came under fire last night after he was accused of urging bosses of the UK’s new super-bank to protect jobs north of the border.

Critics say that with a Scottish by-election soon, the thought of 25,000 Scottish job losses would have been a hammer blow to Gordon Browns survival.

Yesterday Mr Darling admitted that he had made his concerns “very clear” to Lloyds TSB bosses about the future of HBOS’s iconic Edinburgh Headquarters – The Mound.

The company has insisted that the Edinburgh office will make it through the re-shuffle, continue to print Scottish banknotes and added that its ‘management focus’ would be on saving as many staff as possible north of the border.

City analysts were taken aback by the merger document’s specific pledge to ‘keep jobs in Scotland’ and pointed out that it doesn’t sit easily with an overall drive to find £1billion in job cuts.

They feel that appeared employees in England would face the brunt of the cutbacks.

In an interview with Radio 5 Mr Darling said, “HBOS and the new group will continue to have a very significant presence in Scotland.

“I can well understand, not least because I happen to be an Edinburgh MP, where a lot of my constituents work for HBOS, people will be concerned.

“I have spoken to the bank, not just about jobs, but the need to maintain a very significant presence in Edinburgh, in Scotland.”

Last night a spokesman for the chancellor denied that he sought any undertaking on Scottish jobs from Lloyds TSB bosses.