One can argue endlessly about the precise composition of the Committee, their term of appointment and so on. The key consideration for me is that all nine members need to be genuinely independent, technical experts in the field of monetary policy or a closely related field, not representatives of any particular social or industrial grouping. The objective of policy is appropriately determined by a democratic process; the Committee’s job is, as I say, a technical one, which requires relevant technical expertise. BIS Review 66/2000  4  The transparency of the Committee’s decision-making process is assured by continuation of the requirements that we should produce our quarterly Inflation Report and publish minutes of our monthly meetings, which we have now chosen to do with just a two week delay. Transparency is further enhanced by a requirement that the minutes should record how each individual member of the Committee voted on the interest rate decision. As before, it is vital for public confidence in these new arrangements that their intention is not subverted by the evolution of informal conventions - that the integrity of the procedures is respected. In this context we take great pains to ensure that the true nature of the policy debate is reflected in the minutes and that the range of views around our inflation forecast is properly reflected in the Inflation Report.
Finally, there was an emerging recognition of the potential for conflict between the central bank’s necessary concern with systemic financial stability (you cannot hope to deliver monetary stability if the financial system is crashing about your ears, while monetary stability is itself a primary condition for financial stability) and consumer or depositor protection, which if carried too far can itself undermine the strength of the financial system. These profound changes in underlying philosophy - which, as I say, spread across much of the political spectrum - were in our case fundamentally important in opening the way to a more clearly defined and distinctive role for the Bank of England and a necessary condition, in my view, for the delegation by the Government to the Bank of greater independent, technical, responsibility. Even so, although those changes were a necessary condition, they were not in themselves sufficient, and greater independence did not come all at once. As often happens, sadly, a big step forward came after a major setback. In 1992 after we had been driven unceremoniously out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (following the boom and bust of the late 1980s / early 1990s), the Government of the day adopted an explicit inflation target as the nominal anchor for monetary policy. Interest rate decisions in pursuit of that target remained with the Chancellor of the Exchequer after consultation with myself as Governor and my senior monetary policy experts at the Bank. But the really novel feature of the new arrangements was their transparency.