Reviewing Bank of England Independence: The Report of the Bank of England Commission

In this article, Geoffrey Williams outlines the main findings and recommendations of the independent Bank of England Commission set up by the Conservative Party to review the performance of the United Kingdom's monetary policy framework. Its final report published earlier this month, recommended that operational independence of the Bank of England should be retained but that important improvements can be made to how policy is conducted. These include even greater transparency in policy decisions, changing the inflation target and creating a new Parliamentary Committee and possibly a new Council of Economic Advisers to provide for the UK the clearest possible democratic and professional scrutiny of economic policy.