Lord Lea of Crondall
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Monetary Policy Committee
Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Davies of Stamford
Does the Minister agree that, although the Monetary Policy Committee has a single target imposed on it—the 2 per cent inflation target—in practice it has been behaving as though, like the Federal Reserve, it has a multiple target, with responsibility not merely for price stability but for stabilisation or employment? It may be a very good thing that the Bank of England has not been increasing interest rates, as it might have done if it had been following a single price stability target over the past couple of years, but are the Government not concerned at the discrepancy between the formal position and the actual practice on which our monetary policy is currently based?