Governor Jayawardena, there are many aspects of our new regime that I have not touched upon - including questions relating to our capital, our revenues, expenditure and allocation of profits and how they are reported and accounted for - which can also affect the degree of independence we enjoy. Perhaps we might explore these together with the other issues in our discussion. But I hope I have said enough to draw a few conclusions. My starting point had been that central bank independence in the extreme sense of exemption from democratic control is unrealistic and inappropriate. Yet wise governments in many countries around the world have recognised that they can gain advantage - in terms of public and market credibility from detached and unbiased advice in its field of competence from the central bank. The value that they put on the central bank’s role depends very much on the quality of that advice - the central bank’s objectivity and its technical expertise and professional competence. That is largely down to us. But the benefit a government derives from it depends too upon the advice being seen to be detached and unbiased, as well as technically expert and professionally competent. And that depends also upon the government.
In fact I think we probably tend to err on the side of drawing too much, rather than too little, attention to differences of opinion within the Committee which are often largely a question of nuance. But it is better in my view to err on that side rather than to attempt to submerge the differences. We do not, however, attribute particular views to particular individuals. To do so would invite prepared statements and militate against the inter-active debate which is an outstanding and immensely valuable characteristic of our meetings. It would suppress the kind of “what if” discussion in which the same individual may explore alternative views. No attempt is made to concert the outcome of the policy decision; in fact I go out of my way to discourage any kind of collusion, whether between the internal or external members of the Committee - we are, and must remain, nine independent members, individually accountable for our decisions as to how we vote. This, of course, means that the Committee is divided as often as not; but although this initially led to public comment to the effect that the Committee did not know what it was doing and could not make up its mind, it is now generally accepted as the natural order of things and helps to underline to the public at large that monetary policy making cannot be a precise science - however much it needs to be informed by all the science available to us.