Barclays boss Bob Diamond was paid £6.3 million (€7.5 million) for 2011, including a bonus of £2.7 million, the British bank said today.

However, according to the bank's latest annual report, the chief executive was only the third highest paid executive at the bank behind two other unnamed individuals.

Mr Diamond's pay package last year included a bonus of £2.7 million. However, its highest paid executive - who has not been identified - received £6.7 million, while another unnamed banker was awarded £6.5 million in total.

Mr Diamond was paid £1.35 million salary, £2.7 million in a deferred share award bonus, and £2.25 million in long-term incentive awards, Barclays said in its annual report.

His total pay was down from £9 million in 2010.

Britain's banks are under fire for failing to show restraint with pay for executives and top staff when thousands of jobs are being cut and wages are being cut or put on hold after a recession many blamed on the banks.

Britain stripped the former head of Royal Bank of Scotland Fred Goodwin of his knighthood in January after he become a target of public fury in Britain for his role in the 2008 financial crash.

"RBS came to symbolise everything that went wrong with the British economy over the last decade and under Fred Goodwin that's when it happened and I think it's appropriate therefore that he loses his knighthood," Britain's finance minister George Osborne said at the time.

The decision to strip Mr Goodwin of his knighthood came two days after Goodwin's successor at RBS, Stephen Hester, announced he would turn down £1 million share bonus that had drawn withering scorn from all of Britain's major political parties.