The £500bn rescue scheme comes in three parts:

• £50bn of taxpayers' money will be offered to banks to rebuild their capital reserves. The banks are not required to accept this money, but if they do it will be in the form of new preference shares

• £200bn of liquidity is being made available as short-term loans in an attempt to thaw the frozen interbank lending markets. This is twice as much as was previouly offered under the Special Liquidity Scheme

• A further £250bn will underwrite lending between banks - another attempt to shore up their balance sheets.

The £50bn part-nationalisation section of the scheme is equivalent to £2,000 for every taxpayer in the UK.

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