|
 |
| The Times, 15 February 2006 |
|
| GORDON BROWN came under renewed fire yesterday from MPs on the Commons Treasury Committee over claims of secrecy and a lack of consultation or transparency surrounding the appointment of members of the Bank of England's interest rate setting committee. |
|
|
|
| In a report giving the committee's backing for the Chancellor's nomination of Sir John Gieve as the Bank's new Deputy Governor, it sounded a note of concern that, as the former Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, he is the second top civil servant to be installed on the Monetary Policy Committee. "We express full confidence in the work of the MPC, whilst noting that both Deputy Governors... |
|
|
|
| were formerly civil servants," the report said. |
|
|
|
| In July 2003 Rachel Lomax became the Bank's other Deputy Governor, having previously served as Permanent Secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions, and as a one-time Treasury official. |
|
|
|
| The MPs' report came after Michael Fallon, Conservative MP for Sevenoaks and the committee's most senior Opposition member, accused the Chancellor of turning the MPC into "a kind of retirement home for Treasury mandarins". |
|
|
|
| Yesterday Mr Fallon returned to the attack. "The Bank and the MPC have to be independent and these senior appointments should be advertised and recruited openly, rather than left in the Chancellor's gift," he said. He said there should be concern that there was no senior City or banking figure on the MPC. |
|
|
|
| Susan Kramer, a Liberal Democrat member of the committee, said: "The Chancellor should widen the talent pool from which these appointments are made, otherwise the Treasury is creating barriers for other people of ability." |
|
|
|
| David Ruffley, Tory MP for Bury St Edmunds and a committee member and former Treasury adviser, accused Mr Brown of imposing an appointments process that "smacks of institutionalised mandarinism". |
|
|
|
|
|
