MPs have launched a campaign to save Northern Rock’s charity arm, which faces the axe after the nationalised lender was put up for sale.

They have urged the Government to ensure the Northern Rock Foundation, which has handed out millions of pounds to deserving causes across the region, is protected by any future owner.

The move comes days after the Treasury announced that it hoped to find a £1bn buyer for the Rock’s “good bank” by the end of the year.

A group of 16 MPs have raised the alarm over a failure to make the foundation’s survival a condition of the sale of the Newcastle-based lender.

The group’s parliamentary motion accused the Treasury of settling for a “vague aspiration that bidders may keep the foundation beyond 2012”.

And it concluded: “We urge ministers to toughen their stance, so that the foundation can continue to play a pivotal role in the Big Society in the North-East and Cumbria.”

Fears have been raised about the future of the charitable arm since Northern Rock’s crash in autumn 2007.

The amount given to charity has already fallen, from five per cent of the former building society’s pre-tax profits, to only one per cent. When it was nationalised, an annual sum of £15m was guaranteed.

Last week, the Treasury announced an agreement under which Northern Rock would continue to contribute one per cent of its profits to the foundation until December 2012.

But Mark Hoban, a Treasury minister born in County Durham, made clear it would be up to whoever bought the Rock to decide what happened.

Among the 16 MPs who signed the motion – tabled by Ian Mearns (Gateshead) – are Alex Cunningham (Stockton North), Pat Glass (North West Durham), Grahame Morris (Easington), Kevan Jones (Durham North), Jenny Chapman (Darlington) and Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland).

It states that more than 3,700 grants have been made to nearly 2,000 organisations over the past 13 years by a charitable arm, praised as “exemplary” in an independent study.