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<p>The UK’s monetary policy framework gives operational responsibility for monetary
policy to the independent Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) at the Bank of England.
Decisions on setting monetary policy are for the judgement of the Monetary Policy
Committee.</p><p> </p><p>The Government is sensitive to the fact that there will be
those who gain and those who lose from any particular monetary policy decision. Such
distributional effects typically balance out over the course of a policy cycle.</p><p>
</p><p>Over the last six years low interest rates have helped households and businesses
through challenging economic times. Furthermore, as the Bank of England has explained
in its article entitled "The distributional effects of asset purchases"
published in its 2012 Q3 Quarterly Bulletin: "Without the Bank's asset purchases,
most people in the United Kingdom would have been worse off. Economic growth would
have been lower. Unemployment would have been higher. Many more companies would have
gone out of business. This would have had a significant detrimental impact on savers
and pensioners along with every other group in our society."</p><p> </p><p>The
Pension Protection Fund is financially sustainable and there are no plans to further
strengthen it. The PPF 2015/16 annual report said that the Fund has over <del class="ministerial">£22</del>
<ins class="ministerial">£23 </ins>billion assets under management and is <del class="ministerial">115</del>
<ins class="ministerial">116.3</ins> per cent funded.</p>
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