Reviled banking executives received a total pay rise of a third last year, gaining bonuses worth nearly four times their yearly salary.

The figures prompted disgust from unions yesterday which were aghast at the brazenness in the face of rising levels of inequality.

Figures from the European Banking Authority revealed Britain employs more than three-quarters of the EU's highest-earning bankers, with 2,714 earning more than €1 million (£833,000) in 2012.

That was 11 per cent higher than in 2011 and puts the City on a collision course with the new European Union bonus cap set to come into force next year.

Bankers' stooge Chancellor George Osborne has filed a formal complaint against Brussels over the plans, but the banks are understood to be planning to sidestep the rules by handing out monthly payments to affected staff.

Average total pay - including salaries, pensions and bonuses - for London's top earning bankers surged 35 per cent to £1.6 million.

In Britain, 81 per cent of the highest earners work in investment banking, with the rest split across asset management, retail banking and other business areas.

Unite national officer for finance Dominic Hook said: "We have created a society where many families will have to make the heart-rending decision 'to heat or eat.'

"We need action on over inflated remuneration packages for the elite group of bankers, which as recent history proves, are often not justified."

Mr Hook highlighted the disparity within the financial industry itself, pointing out that Unite represents thousands of bank workers who earn in many cases as little as £17,000 a year.

He said: "They have borne the fall-out from the banking crisis, which they did not cause, with massive job cuts and constant reorganisations which have reduced services to high street customers."

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady also slammed the bankers while personally holding Mr Osborne to account.

She said: "The economic crash has led to the longest decline in living standards since the nineteenth century for ordinary people.

"Yet the bankers who caused it get richer every year. The British people cannot understand why the Chancellor is still stoutly defending soaraway banker pay in Brussels."