Autumn Statement 2023

Baroness Lawlor Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to welcome the Minister to the Front Bench and I wish her every success. I am very glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, with his very interesting suggestions on educating youngsters, particularly on investment and shares, and applaud his work over many years in that area.

I declare an interest as the founder and research director of Politeia, a think tank which has published a great deal on many of the matters raised by your Lordships today and in the Autumn Statement, particularly on levels of tax and public expenditure and their impact on the economy and inflation. Other noble Lords have commented on many aspects of tax and public spending. My noble friend Lady Lea spoke on the wider economic context. My noble friends Lady Noakes and Lord Frost considered the overall context and the impact of the size and power of the state on economic growth. We heard an interesting vignette from my noble friend Lord Dobbs earlier on what happened in the United States economy when we saw success moving from the sunshine state and the north-east and New York down to Texas. There are lessons for this country there.

I welcome the lower inflation figure of 4.6% and the forecast that inflation is due to fall to 2.8% by 2024 and to reach the 2% target in 2025. My noble friend Lord Northbrook commented on inflation and asked very pertinent questions about the role of the Bank of England and its governor. Perhaps I might reflect on questions prompted by the Bank’s remit of the inflation figure target of 2% of GDP. Given that inflation in the 28 years to 2020 was 2%—a rise of 2% in the CPI—what were the authorities in the Bank thinking when inflation went up five times that much over the next two years to reach 11% in October last year? Did they expect it? If not, why not? We might recall the question asked by Her Majesty the late Queen Elizabeth when visiting the LSE at the time of the financial crisis in 2008: “Why did nobody notice it?” It was a question to which economists were then just beginning to turn their attention. Indeed, one answer given in 2021 to our current problems and since was that the rise in inflation was due to external shocks: Covid, the Ukraine war, escalating fuel prices and so on.

The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, has already referred to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee report Making an Independent Bank of England Work Better, and I too congratulate its chairman and committee. The report, published this week, noted the importance of an independent Bank in achieving price stability, but mentioned that public confidence had fallen in the Bank of England, given that inflation has remained above target. While the report referred to supply shocks, it also noted that the

“above-target inflation over this period also reflects errors in the conduct of monetary policy, including an over-reliance on inadequate forecasting models”.

Although not alone among central banks in failing to anticipate the high and persistent inflation, the report suggested that there may be

“a lack of diversity of view in the Bank of England and wider central bank community”,

and that

“Some witnesses … considered that the inflationary potential of elevated rates of money supply growth were given insufficient attention by the Bank”.


Here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, that perhaps Governments pay too much attention to the specialist advisers on whom they rely. The problem raised by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee highlights one of the significant changes in the measures and arrangements used by official bodies—that the money supply and the growth in money supply no longer tend to be used or considered to matter. Put less delicately, there may a tendency to groupthink.

The economist John Greenwood recently drew attention to the data available then and now on money supply growth, noting that each period of high inflation was preceded by a rapid growth in the money supply. This is a subject which the monetary economic and former Treasury adviser Professor Tim Congdon has considered over decades. Indeed, in April 2020 in the Wall Street Journal, Congdon predicted the return of inflation in the US with the highest annual rate of money growth since World War II. I welcome the Government’s commitment outlined in the Statement to lower inflation and their support for an independent Bank, but might it now be timely to include in the Bank’s letter a requirement, as Professor Congdon proposed, that the Governor of the Bank of England would write to the Chancellor when

“money growth is too high or too late relative to the 2 per cent inflation target”

and tell the Chancellor

“why the … quantity of money will prove compatible with future inflation close to the 2 per cent target”?

Such a requirement would be fully consistent with the operational independence of the Bank and, combined with other proposals from the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, would help the Bank as well as the Government, the Treasury and their economic advisers to take account of the diversity of data and view and ensure the right course is followed. No longer need a potential reluctance to take account of money supply growth be a factor in decisions which can have such a devastating effect on our economy and the lives and livelihoods of the people.