LONDON (Bloomberg) - The UK will investigate payouts awarded to executives at banks bailed out by the government and plans to overhaul the way financial institutions are managed, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said.

"No-one who is associated with these large losses, this excessive risk-taking should be allowed to walk away with big cash bonuses," Mr. Darling told the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Andrew Marr programme yesterday. "The whole culture in the boardrooms of British banks needs to change."

The Treasury is examining bonus arrangements as Prime Minister Gordon Brown faces growing pressure to limit pay at banks while the economy is mired in recession. In the US, President Barack Obama plans to cap pay at $500,000 a year for top executives at banks rescued by the government.

The inquiry in the UK will examine the connection between salaries and risk-taking, Mr. Darling wrote in the Sunday Telegraph.

"What a lot of these bankers need to understand is that some of these banks wouldn't be standing if the taxpayer hadn't stepped in," Mr. Darling told the BBC. "If they want any government help in future, that will be tied to strict conditions not just in terms of lending but also in terms of pay to staff."

Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc. will pay almost £1 billion ($1.5 billion) in bonuses after receiving a £20 billion capital injection from the government, the newspaper reported. Lloyds Banking Group plc. is planning to pay bonuses based on stock, the Sunday Times reported.

Edinburgh-based RBS said it was in talks with the government about pay and no decision had been made.

"Any bonuses will be dramatically reduced and there would be no reward for failure in those bits of its business where the losses were concentrated," the bank said in a statement yesterday.

Lloyds executives agreed to defer any bonus they may receive until the end of this year and to have payouts in stock, Eleanor Ross, a spokeswoman, said by telephone today.

"While directors are entitled to a cash bonus in respect of performance in 2008, they have agreed to take any bonuses awarded in shares," she said.

The government's review will also consider the role of institutional investors and international standards in setting the way banks are run, Mr. Darling wrote. The British Bankers Association said in a statement today it "will gladly engage" with the investigation.

Lawmakers from all political parties have pressed Brown to clamp down on bonuses and risk-taking at financial institutions. Communities Secretary Hazel Blears told Sky News today that "there does need to be a change of culture."

"The party is over for the banks," George Osborne, who speaks for the opposition Conservative party on Treasury matters, told the BBC. "It is totally unacceptable for these large banks which have large tax shareholdings to pay large cash bonuses to their senior management."

Vincent Cable, Treasury spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, told Sky News a cap on compensation for executives may be an appropriate short-term measure.

"It's outrageous that banks that have failed and collapsed and have been supported by the taxpayer are being paid out bonuses," Mr. Cable told the news channel.

Public support for the governing Labour Party is at the lowest level since Brown's bank bailout in October, the Sunday Telegraph said, citing an ICM Research poll.

Twenty-eight percent of respondents backed Labour, leaving it 12 percentage points behind the Conservatives on 40 percent and six points ahead of the Liberal Democrats, on 22 percent ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,010 adults by telephone on February 4 and February 5, the newspaper said.

Brown told reporters last week he supported Obama "strongly" on the need to change the way bankers are rewarded. Rather than capping pay, Brown and Business Secretary Peter Mandelson are urging executives toward restraint.

Brown has twice refused to say he would ban bonuses at RBS. Mr. Darling also refused to accept a cap on payments, saying the government had to take into account incentives for employees.

Barclays plc. plans to pay £600 million in bonuses, the Sunday Telegraph reported, without saying where it got the information. HBOS plc., the Edinburgh-based bank taken over by Lloyds, paid cash to some executives from share-based performance plans, the Guardian newspaper reported on Saturday.