Recommendation 18

HM Government Acknowledged

The Treasury and the OBR should consider raising the profile of regional data in their publications. We also recommend that the Bank of England develop their datasets from their Regional Agents network and Decision Maker panel and endeavour to highlight disparities in regions in their publications. We recommend that the Treasury also review the remits of both the OBR and Bank in the next year to see whether they need changing to reflect the Government’s “levelling up” agenda. (Paragraph 139) The Bank’s objectives are to achieve price and financial stability for the UK. Subject to achieving its primary objectives, the Bank is also required to support the government’s economic policy objective to achieve strong, sustainable and balanced growth, in all regions and sectors of the economy. In addition, the Bank of England Act notes that the Monetary Policy Committee should collect the regional, sectoral and other information necessary for the purposes of formulating monetary policy. The Bank draws on many sources of information when setting policy, including the very valuable information provided by the Agents and the DMP survey. The Bank’s Agents collect quantitative and qualitative information from companies around the UK, and the DMP survey gathers quantitative data from a large sample of businesses. The Bank aims to be as transparent as possible and publishes information from the Agents and DMP on a regular basis to aid public understanding. The Bank will consider whether more information could be published on a regional basis. As part of that, the Bank will reflect on some of the issues around the regional aspects of the information gathered by the Agents and DMP. For example, while the companies from which intelligence and data are gathered are often located in certain areas of the UK, many of them operate across the country. As a result, some of the information they provide will not reflect only local conditions.