RBS announced in October it was leaving the government's asset protection scheme in which the bank had seltered toxic assets with a value of £282 billion when it was launched in 2009. RBS has since offloaded around half of the assets which had been held in the scheme, which cost RBS around £2.5 billion in premiums to use. Last year RBS reported a pre-tax profit of £2 billion for the third quarter, though that profit came from an accounting gain on the fair value of its own debt which rose in value from £858 million in the third quarter of 2010 to £2.35 billion. The profit was derived from what was described as a "debt accounting gains" from RBS buying back its own debt at discount after its credit rating was slashed, and then booking the price between the lower and book value as a gain. RBS said today group operating profit rose to £1.047 billion in the third quarter of this year against just £2 million reported for the third quarter of last year.