Governor of the Bank of England to give evidence to Lords Economic Affairs Committee

This public evidence session will have remote participation by the Governor and Committee members. The session will be streamed live on Parliament TV.

Questions the Committee is likely to ask include:

• Does the Bank’s central economic forecast still consist of a V-shaped recovery?
• Is the IMF’s assessment right that advanced economies should not be worried about public debt, and take advantage of historically low borrowing costs to increase spending on infrastructure?
• Was the Bank sufficiently prepared for an outbreak of COVID-19 across the UK?
• Should more stringent conditions – such as climate-related financial disclosures and limits on redundancies – have been attached to the Covid Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF) scheme?
• Is the Government doing enough to prevent long-term scarring in the labour market?
• In August, you backed the decision to close the furlough scheme, before calling for the Government to “stop and rethink” the end of furlough in September. Does the Winter Economic Plan do enough to reflect what you were calling for?
• Under what circumstances would negative interest rates be introduced in the UK?
• Is quantitative easing likely to become a permanent feature of monetary policy?
• Should the Bank take unemployment as seriously as inflation and formalise this with an operational target?
• What is the Bank doing to plan for the possibility of there being no trade deal in place at the end of the transition period?

More on the Economic Affairs Committee

The Economic Affairs Committee is one of the five permanent investigative committees in the House of Lords and is charged with considering economic affairs.

• Committee Website
• Twitter - @LordsEconCom