Brown hails 'bold' bail-out plan

The Prime Minister told a Downing Street news conference: "Extraordinary times call for the bold and far-reaching solutions that the Treasury has announced.

"Our stability and restructuring programme is comprehensive, it is specific and it breaks new ground. This is not a time for conventional thinking or outdated dogma but for the fresh and innovative intervention that gets to the heart of the problem."

The Prime Minister said the recovery plan would be funded through increased borrowing but insisted taxpayers would "earn a proper return".

"All these are investments being made by the Government which will earn a proper return for the taxpayer," he told reporters. "This support is on commercial terms. We expect to be rewarded for the support we provide."

Mr Brown said global action was also required, announcing that the UK had put forward plans to other European countries.

"We have invited other European countries to consider proposals we have put to them this morning on medium-term funding and we are in active consultation about how we can adopt a European-wide funding plan. I have spoken to (French) president Sarkozy this morning about this."

Britain is also in discussions about a meeting of world leaders, he said.

Asked why he would not offer a concrete guarantee to all savers that their deposits were safe, Mr Brown stressed that no one had yet lost out in any of the banks which had hit difficulty, such as Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley.

The same support was also being given to those with money in troubled Icelandic bank Icesave, he said.