Finance: Interest Rates

Lord Peston Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

No, my Lords, I do not think it is. You cannot control both. One of the interesting things about the large depreciation in the pound is that it did not have the impact on the balance of payments that people expected. The rate of exchange is only one of many variables that determine how competitive and successful exports are. All the evidence is that it is not quite as important a determinant as used to be thought.

[Lord Peston (Lab)]

My Lords, as background to this Question, we should remember that when we were debating the 1998 Act the Minister went to great lengths to emphasise that the activities of the Monetary Policy Committee would be scrutinised not only by other place but also by this House. Certainly, when I was chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee—a committee I invented, as the Minister is well aware—we used to see the Governor of the Bank of England regularly. All that is background to a very simple question: when was the last time that the Governor of the Bank of England went to the Economic Affairs Committee and was scrutinised by it?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I am afraid that I do not read the papers of the Economic Affairs Committee as assiduously as I should, and I cannot quite remember. My recollection from reading them from time to time is that the governor still goes, although not as frequently as when the noble Lord set up the committee. The committee was established specifically to review the workings of the Monetary Policy Committee; it was not an Economic Affairs Committee—I had the honour of sitting on it with the noble Lord. Although the governor does not come to the committee as frequently as he used to, he still does come—but I shall write to the noble Lord to tell him when the last time was.