Economy Update

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I have a couple of concerns about wider financial sustainability and, if I go too wide, perhaps my noble friend could write to me. The first is on monetary policy, picking up on what the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, said. How are we going to get inflation down? The Chancellor seems to be leaving this to the Bank of England, but it has been very slow to increase interest rates or stop QE—it has now done that—and it does not have any proper monetarist economists on the MPC, so I am not quite clear how inflation is going to go down. The second thing, which is also perhaps a little broad, is that 1 million non-British people have arrived in the UK in the last year. I would be interested to know how much of the much-needed aid that has been announced today will in practice go to them.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, on my noble friend’s first point, she tempts me to comment on the operation of monetary policy by the independent Bank of England. The only comment I will give is this: since control of monetary policy was taken out of the hands of politicians 25 years ago, inflation has averaged precisely 2%. On my noble friend’s second point, I do not have those figures. I am not sure that they would necessarily be available, but I am happy to find out. If they are, I can write to her and supply them.