Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, has said the world’s leading economies are close to agreeing a tax on banks that will raise billions of pounds a year but has played down expectations that a deal will be struck at the next G20 meeting in June, the Financial Times reports.

The next general UK election is only weeks away, by which time – if current opinion polls are a guide – Brown’s ruling Labour government will be out of office although the result may not give any of the major parties an overall majority in parliament. Brown was expected to announce today that a general election will be held on 6 May.

Brown said the UK, France and Germany were now broadly agreed on the need for a levy, and he hoped the US would join in such an effort, the newspaper said.

The idea of an international levy has been debated for some time in recent months. Some groups have called for a so-called “Robin Hood” tax to be imposed on banks to suppress what they claim is unwarranted and damaging financial market speculation. G20 policymakers, meanwhile, have tended to support such a tax on grounds that it will be used to fund any future financial rescues.

As discussed at WealthBriefing recently, a criticism of any such bank tax is that its effects will be passed onto consumers of financial services in the form of higher costs and less attractive savings rates, for example. If governments try to prevent such effects, then such a tax will cut into banks’ balance sheets. (To view the article, click here).