Currently, the amount of spare capacity appears to be close to historical averages, which is not what we might expect when the economy is in such an early stage of recovery from recession. This, and other evidence, casts doubt on the degree of spare capacity in the economy and on how significant this factor will be in dampening inflation from its currently elevated level. 10  Business failures in the recent recession peaked at below 1% of firms, compared with 2.6% in the early 1990s and 1.8% in the early 1980s. 10  BIS Review 134/2010  Another puzzle is a surprising drop in productivity we have seen over the recession. Unusually, the decline in output appears to have been much bigger than the decline in employment when normally we observe the opposite result. In terms of the impact on unemployment, this has been a good thing, helping to dampen the cost of the recession in terms of lost jobs. But this raises further questions about how much slack there is in the UK labour market as the economy begins to grow and generate new jobs. The behaviour of productivity in the recession also raises the question of whether the UK productivity growth trend over the medium term has shifted. If it has, we may make big mistakes basing our assessment of underlying growth on past productivity trends.
Clearly, in economic terms, the cost of litigiousness and its terrible effect on the reputation of the entire sector more than exceeds any hypothetical benefits that individual banks might have obtained through questionable practices. Society has clearly evolved and, in tandem, so have demands regarding the transparency, diligence, rigour and integrity expected of banks. I believe the sector is responding to this challenge, which involves achieving a significant cultural change in the way banks relate to their customers. I have pointed out that it is premature to analyse the results of this Law in terms of potential improvements to legal certainty, but we can see a change in the number of complaints submitted to the Banco de España. As you will know, in recent years the problems related to mortgage loans have led to the change in the number of complaints lodged with the Banco de España. This is due in particular to two issues: the above-mentioned floor clauses and mortgage loan arrangement costs, which saw a record number of complaints submitted in 2017. However, mortgage loan complaints made last year fell to levels of a decade ago. We expect this trend to continue. But apart from one-off changes in the time series, I wish to emphasise the fact that the problems behind these complaints stem from operations entered into prior to the enactment of the Law in question.