, but as a measure of the extent to which the growth of demand is held consistently broadly in line with the underlying - sustainable - growth of supply - side capacity. the past ten years have in fact been a period of unusual stability in that broader sense for the uk economy as a whole. inflation has been consistently low throughout that time - close to, and recently modestly below, our present 2½ % target. but that has not been achieved at the expense of consistently high interest rates, and weak growth and high unemployment, as many people initially feared that it would. in fact nominal interest rates have been as low as most of us can ever remember ; the overall economy has grown consistently for 40 successive quarters without interruption at an average annual rate of some 2¾ %, which is comfortably above its long - term trend ; and the number of people in employment has risen fairly steadily to close to an all - time high, while the rate of unemployment has fallen to a more than 25 - year low. the overall picture is much the same for the west midlands region. i don't have regional data for real economic growth, but using the deflator for the uk economy, your region grew from 1992 to 1999, at an annual average rate of 2. 7 % - very close to the rate for the uk as a whole. the number of people in employment in the region has also increased, with the employment rate now close to a 10 year high and in line with - in fact marginally above - the average for the uk of 74. 6 %. and the rate of unemployment - on the claimant count basis - at 3. 5 % is very close to its 25 year low. that's still a bit above the uk average rate, of 3. 1 % but it's very much better than the 10 % rate of a decade ago. now i know it hasn't felt like that for everyone - particularly for internationally exposed businesses and their employees and for the regions in which such businesses are more heavily concentrated including the west midlands with its relatively high concentration of manufacturing businesses. i am well aware that many of them - perhaps many of you - have been having a rough time over the past few years. although the uk economy as a whole managed to avoid recession, uk manufacturing output fell from a peak nearly two years ago by around 7 % and employment in uk manufacturing fell by 225, 000 people, or some 6 %. to put that into perspective, manufacturing output fell from

to build stronger links with a wider, more diverse group of colleagues, and also deepen those over time, as they progress through their careers. there is a very important further issue in all of this, which is sadly highly topical, namely to ask what is the antidote to the problem of lobbying? the answer is not to speak to no - one. that is not likely to lead to good decision making. the answer is to be rigorous about speaking to a diverse range of people to get their views. we look forward to engaging with you in the future, working together to understand financial market developments from a diverse and varied range of perspectives to inform our policy committee decisions. thank you i am grateful to christine boykiw, sumita ghosh, sam juthani, ankita mehta and arjun popat for their assistance in helping me prepare these remarks. 1 see carney ( 2017 ) – link in references section. gender, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation and education are types of ‘ identity ’ diversity. ‘ cognitive ’ diversity is about our perspectives and how we think about and solve problems. 2 bailey 3 hauser ( 2020 ), cleland ( 2019 ), hauser ( 2019 ), breeden ( 2019 ), cleland ( 2019 ), carney ( 2019 ) among others. 4 see paterson ( 2020 ) for a recent update on bank activities. 5 see, for instance, haldane ( 2014 ) or sweeney ( 2019 ). 6 haldane and may 7 haldane 8 hauser 9 updated mi charteropens in a new window 10 updated uk money markets codesopens in a new window 3 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches