RBS chief exective Ross McEwan has vowed to press on with plans to close more than 50 branches in Scotland despite public anger.

Mr McEwan told Westminster's Scottish affairs committee he recognised the disappointment of customers facing bank closures but the decision was the "best way of going forward" for the company.

The bank, which is majority-owned by the taxpayer, announced in December it would close 62 branches across Scotland, later giving a temporary reprieve to ten of these until the end of 2018 for review.

Mr McEwan told MPs that the size of the Scottish network would not be reviewed again until at least 2020, but that there was no further opportunity for reprieve for the 52 facing closure.

Committee convener Pete Wishart asked what he would say in response to the "disappointment, frustration and anger" of those communities who would lose their local facility.

Mr McEwan said he accepted "change is absolutely difficult", adding "I do recognise that customers are very disappointed that their local branch is closing".

He said: "What we've done here with a package of different ways of operating with this bank is, I think, the best way of going forward, that we can keep those services to our customers as well as moving away from physical distribution when it's just not being used."

He added: "We've not taken any of these closure decisions lightly.

"Let's be clear, when we look at our customer behaviour the evidence is stark."

MPs were told that, contrary to claims by the Unite union that there would be 179 compulsory job cuts, there would be a maximum of 12 compulsory redundancies at the affected branches.

The committee also heard that no external reviewer has yet been appointed to carry out the review of the ten branches offered a reprieve, despite it due to take place between June and August.

Mr McEwan denied that they were being "set up to fail" and insisted that he would take the recommendation of the review.

Mr Wishart asked: "Is there any chance or prospect of having another look at this again, given all the things that you've heard and all the anger and disappointment there is in these communities?"

Mr McEwan said: "We are reshaping this bank and our view was to reshape it in a way that we gave lots of other alternative services to customers.

"So yes, we are closing a number of branches and they will go ahead.

"We will review the ten and we will seriously review those ten - it's not an olive branch we're putting out.

"But we do need to push this organisation forward as customer behaviour is changing quite dramatically."