BOE: Pill: MPR and Minutes Formats to Change from November

Huw Pill says that from the November MPR there will be a change in communications from the MPC "to capture the wider range of inputs that are informing monetary policy at each point in time." This is part of the evolution of BOE communications following the Bernanke review. As well as some changes to the initial format, there will be a change in format for the Minutes to go into each member's views in more granular detail. We await to see how this looks, but parts may be similar to how the Riksbank Minutes are laid out for example. Key parts from the speech:

• "We will be updating the content of the quarterly Monetary Policy Report so that it is more flexible and covers the wider range of perspectives and inputs considered by the MPC and clarifies how it has fed into their judgements. The Report will include a number of boxes covering issues most pertinent to the monetary policy decision, as
  well as a section on risks and scenarios."
• "A new Monetary Policy Overview section will set out how the analytical inputs have informed the MPC’s collective policy decision. This will sit alongside the existing Monetary Policy Summary which will serve as a short explanation of the MPC’s collective policy decisions."
• "And finally, in addition to a record of MPC discussions, the Minutes will contain space for each member to explain their own policy views."
• "Giving more weight in the minutes to individual views reflects a distinctive feature of the UK monetary policy framework, where the votes of MPC members are published and they are individually accountable to Parliament for those votes. This is also reflected in the periodic appearance of all MPC members before the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee. Providing more information on individual member views is a natural counterpart to the greater emphasis being placed on the collective Committee decision in the Monetary Policy Summary."