Ұлыбритания Банкінің Монетарлық Саясат Комитеті

Committee of the Bank of England that decides the United Kingdom's official interest rate

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is a committee of the Bank of England, which meets for three and a half days, eight times a year, to decide the official interest rate in the United Kingdom (the Bank of England Base Rate). It is also responsible for directing other aspects of the government's monetary policy framework, such as quantitative easing and forward guidance. The Committee comprises nine members, including the Governor of the Bank of England, and is responsible primarily for keeping the Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation close to a target set by the government, currently 2% per year (as of 2019). Its secondary aim – to support growth and employment – was reinforced in March 2013. Announced on 6 May 1997, only five days after that year's General Election, and officially given operational responsibility for setting interest rates in the Bank of England Act 1998, the committee was designed to be independent of political interference and thus to add credibility to interest rate decisions. Each member has one vote, for which they are held to account: full minutes of each meeting are published alongside the committee's monetary policy decisions, and members are regularly called before the Treasury Select Committee, as well as speaking to wider audiences at events during the year.

The committee is responsible for formulating the United Kingdom's monetary policy, most commonly via the setting of the rate at it which it lends to banks (officially the Bank of England Base Rate or BOEBR for short). The secondary aim of the committee is to support the government's economic policies, and help it meet its targets for growth and employment. The MPC is not responsible for fiscal policy, which is handled by the Treasury itself, The committee had already started to cut rates the previous autumn, but the effect of such changes can take up to two years and rates cannot go below zero. By March 2009, faced with very low levels on inflation and interest rates already at 0.5%, the MPC voted to start the process of quantitative easing (QE) – the injection of money directly into the economy – via the APF. It had the Bank buy government bonds (gilts), along with a smaller amount of high quality debt issued by private companies. Although non gilts initially made up a non negligible part of the APF portfolio, as of May 2015 the entirety of the APF was held as gilts. On 7 August 2013, Governor Mark Carney issued the committee's first forward guidance as a third tool for controlling future inflation. Criticism of the MPC has centred on its predominant focus on inflation to the detriment of growth and employment, and about the extent to which the introduction and management of QE have risked politicising the committee.

Traditionally, the Treasury set interest rates. After reforms in 1992, officials held regular meetings and published minutes, but were not independent of government.). The Act gave the government responsibility for specifying its price stability target and growth and employment objectives at least annually. The original inflation target the government set for the MPC was 2.5% per year on the RPI X measure of inflation, but in 2003 this was changed to 2% on CPI. The years 1998 to 2006 witnessed an unprecedented period of price stability – during which inflation stayed within a percentage point of the target – despite earlier predictions that it could sit outside the range forty or more per cent of the time. A 2007 report produced for the Treasury Committee noted that the MPC's independence of government "has reduced the scope for short term political considerations to enter into the determination of interest rates". The creation of the MPC, it said, brought with it "an immediate credibility gain". However, the financial crisis of 2007–08 ended this period of stability, and, on 16 April 2007, the governor (at that time Mervyn King), was obliged to write the first MPC open letter to the chancellor (Gordon Brown), explaining why the inflation had deviated from the target of 2% per year by more than one percentage point (3.1%). By February 2013, he had had to write 14 such letters to chancellors. Between October 2008 and March 2009 the base rate was cut six times to an all time low of 0.5% in order to avoid deflation and spur growth. In March 2009, the MPC launched a programme of quantitative easing, initially injecting £75 billion into the economy. By March 2010, it had also increased the amount of money set aside for quantitative easing to £200 billion, a figure later increased by a further £75 billion in the months following October 2011. The MPC announced two further £50 billion rounds of quantitative easing in February and July 2012, bringing the total to £375 billion whilst simultaneously keeping the base rate at 0.5%. This was followed by deflation of 0.1% in April 2015, the first month of negative CPI growth since the 1960s, and triggering a second letter. As of February 2015, Carney has written five such letters. Following the UK's vote to leave the European Union in June 2016, the MPC cut the base rate from 0.5% to 0.25%, the first change since March 2009. At the same time, it announced a further round of quantitative easing, valued at £60 billion, bringing the total to £435 billion.