British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says his government will announce a new bank bailout plan Monday to encourage lending.

Brown announced the move in an interview with Sky News as he spoke on an aircraft flying from the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik to Jerusalem.

Reports carried by the BBC, the Sunday Times and other media organizations said the treasury was preparing to underwrite loans made by banks to shore up flagging confidence in the country's financial sector.

The BBC did not cite a figure, but the Times spoke of a $187-billion-Cdn "lifeline" being extended to such institutions as the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group. The Sunday Telegraph said the figure could be as high as $368 billion Cdn.

It would be the second time in four months Brown's government has intervened to help the banks.

The British government announced last October that it would partly nationalize its major banks. The cost of buying preference shares in some of the country's largest financial institutions was pegged at $97 billion Cdn.

With files from the Associated Press