Lloyds TSB seems to have grasped the nettle when it comes to offshoring IT roles, to the extent that it's actually bringing Indian technology contractors to the UK at the expense of local roles. Understandably, it's incurred the wrath of the unions, but it is really that unique?

Last week, it emerged that Lloyds was introducing a blanket 15% rate cut for its UK IT contractors, and now the Lloyds TSB Group Union has exposed the "outrageous" practice of bringing in tech Indian workers at a lower rate.

Mark Brown, assistant general secretary, says: "Not content with offshoring 4,500 jobs, the bank is now flying in hundreds of Indian staff to work in the UK and take the jobs of UK-based staff."

The union claims Lloyds is the only major employer to do this, but that might not be strictly true even if most firms aren't quite as overt.

As Nigel Roxburgh, research director at the National Outsourcing Association says, it's fairly common practice that once UK roles have been handed to an offshored service provider for the firm to then fly over Indian workers to the UK, often at a lower rate.

"I'd be highly surprised if no other bank was employing the same practice," he says.

He says the saving is still "significant" with the daily rate often being as much as 50% lower for an Indian worker compared to a UK counterpart.

RBS, for example, has a contract with Infosys Technologies of Bangalore and in March it was reported the firm was carrying out IT functions in Scotland for the bank. UK contractors feared this was a precursor to more outsourcing.

After a brief hiatus, offshoring appears to have picked up pace again anyway. UBS  is said to be pondering moving 4,000 positions to India over the next two years.