As the noble Baroness points out, that would obviously be the maths. We will probably have to have further discussion on this, but I would like to come back to the powers.
It is entirely appropriate that court, as the governing body of the Bank, should be responsible for exercising these oversight functions. The Bill is putting in place a model which is widely regarded as best practice in the United Kingdom. It also completes the model that the Treasury Select Committee recommended in 2011, and was subsequently endorsed by the PCBS in 2012. That model is a streamlined unitary board, with express powers to commission performance reviews. Parliament would still see copies of the reports of any performance review published by the court, just as would be the case for reports published by the Oversight Committee. Parliament’s powers are not being reduced and the Treasury Select Committee can summon any non-executive director to give evidence.
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On the point that has consistently been raised about groupthink, I agree that we need to ensure that the Bank is not susceptible to groupthink. The changes that have been made since the financial crisis and the changes we have proposed in this Bill will help to ensure those mistakes are not repeated. Let me run through a few of them. First, the minutes of every court meeting are now published. Secondly, any one non-executive director on court is now able to attend every meeting of the MPC, FPC and PRA boards. Thirdly, the MPC will in future publish transcripts of every meeting. Fourthly, the Bank has established an Independent Evaluation Office, as has been mentioned, to support the non-executive chair in exercising the court’s oversight functions. Noble Lords may have seen that the IEO published a detailed report last week into the accuracy of the Bank’s economic forecasting. Finally, the Bank’s court has been strengthened with a number of new appointments with expertise across a wide range of industries.
Furthermore, we should not assume that groupthink can be avoided in a small group which meets without being able to challenge or be challenged by executive directors. It could equally be argued that a committee of seven people may be just as susceptible to groupthink as a committee of 12. Once again I would argue that it is not only the number of people that matters but their quality and the forum in which they are debating and scrutinising issues.
I strongly believe that there is nothing gained from having an oversight board as well as an oversight committee.