Speeches by Baldwin.

“Governor, you are a noted economic historian—”

“I am going to move on to one last question of particular interest. On 1 July, the Government are bringing in a 50% steel tariff. Has the Bank done any analysis of what the impact might be on the UK economy and on inflation of the 50% steel tariff from 1 July and the reduction in quotas? If not, perhaps you could follow…”

“Well, I have noted it. Could you point to any historic examples where the state setting the price of food has been an effective economic intervention?”

“I thought Dr Mann made an interesting point just now about the competitive nature of the supermarket sector in the UK, but I will change the subject completely to another area where the Government have intervened and changed the price of something, which is the price of employing a young person. That has gone up by abo…”

“This is the UK bringing in a 50% steel tariff on imports of certain grades of steel.”

“All your forecasts do show unemployment going up, including the central forecast, don’t they?”

“Our predecessor Committee in the last Parliament wrote a report on quantitative tightening, and we described it as a “leap in the dark”. Obviously, we have now been in this leap for a few years, so we have a little bit more information about what the real-life impacts of it are. ING bank published a report this week sa…”

“How much more are people having to pay on their mortgages?”

“That is set in law.”

“I just wanted to pick up on the point that Professor Elmendorf raised about assessing legislation that is in process. We have had a situation in the last couple of years where the Planning and Infrastructure Bill got scored by the Office for Budget Responsibility whereas the Employment Rights Bill did not. Although the…”

“In terms of the independence of the Office for Budget Responsibility, would you say that that independence of the resources that it has is a crucial question? How would you strengthen the independence of the resources that the Office for Budget Responsibility currently has from the Executive?”

“I mean the resources that it uses to either employ people or develop models, so the things that it uses to produce its output.”

“If a Chancellor wanted to reduce the number of resources at the Office for Budget Responsibility by cutting the budget, what checks and balances could there be in the system to prevent that from happening?”

“I would like to start by asking Professor Elmendorf how the interaction works between the Congressional Budget Office and the Executive. One thing that the Office for Budget Responsibility has here is the privileged access to the Treasury, what it is planning to do, what the measures are, what the assumptions are and w…”

“Do your staff have the resources to come up with their own tax revenue projections?”

“Would they be quite substantial resources that you have allocated to that?”

“Would you recommend any movement to Government?”

“Okay. You will not be agitating for change in that area. That is what I am hearing.”

“I want to pick up on some issues to do with Mansion House—or is it the Leeds reforms these days?—in terms of progress on all the various different reforms. The first question is on ringfencing. Where do you feel we have got to on ringfencing? You will be aware that when we had evidence from the banks, Barclays took a v…”

“Turning to a couple of the other reforms, I think the PRA has a role to play in the senior managers regime. Where do you see those reforms as having got to? Is that an area where you think more reform is needed?”