Government to give details of banking plan

By Avril Ormsby

LONDON (Reuters) - The government is to give more details about its 400 billion pound banking rescue plan next week, Chancellor Alistair Darling said on Saturday.

"What we are doing over the weekend is looking at the specifics, how do we implement it, and we will be making an announcement at the beginning of the week," he told BBC television in Washington where he has been attending a G7 finance ministers' meeting.

Last Wednesday's financial bail out, which followed a dramatic fall in the value of banking shares on the London stock exchange on Tuesday, was targeted at stabilising banks and getting them lending again.

The package of measures also included a 50 billion pound cash injection, guaranteeing interbank lending by 250 billion pounds to help unfreeze wholesale markets and extending a Bank of England scheme that swaps banks' risky assets for government debt to provide 200 billion pounds of cash to the system.

Darling, writing in the News of the World newspaper this weekend, said his "extraordinary steps" were necessary to help stave off lower growth, lower living standards and fewer jobs across the country.

"I did not step in because I wanted to prop up failing banks," he wrote.

"If the banks stopped lending to people and to businesses that would have serious repercussions for our economy and every one of us."

WASHINGTON MEETING