The Bank of England's deputy governor responsible for financial stability, Paul Tucker, has suggested taxing banks for the cash injections which bailed them out of collapse. Speaking in Tokyo, his first major speech since his appointment, Tucker suggested that in future, government 'claim back the eventual cost' of capital injections that bail out lenders. The suggestion may come as a shock to the banking community but is expected to sit well with critics of the bailouts, who have long raised the unfairness to taxpayers of the financial crisis which was not their responsibility. Tucker further said that governments should consider forcing banks to set up schemes that would cover the costs of future bailouts. 'If the authorities determined that a public equity injection was necessary in order to preserve stability, government could be authorised to provide the support, but with a right to claim back the eventual cost, if any, from an increased "insurance" levy on the banking system over a period of years beginning after the crisis had clearly passed. Under that kind of regime, more of the cost of banking system failures could fall on the shareholders of banks generally rather than on the public purse,' said Tucker. While the reforms would take place in the medium term, Tucker indicated that such plans could also be implemented on the back of the current crisis. He called for a solution to the 'too-big-to-fail' issue of banks on the verge of collapse.'As we have seen across many countries during the current crisis, governments can otherwise end up having to provide capital support in order to prevent the financial system unravelling, with unfathomable costs for the real economy and so for households. The long lesson of history is that we must build a resilient system; but that we and our successors would be foolhardy to imagine that governments will never again need to provide capital to save the day.