requirements. major banks are on track to meet their ‘ end - state ’ mrel requirements which will apply from 2022. smaller banks are given transitional periods to meet higher mrel requirements as they grow into them ; the judgement as to when those requirements should apply is guided by indicative published thresholds. 14 and we have been flexible and responsive to the needs of growing firms ; in response to the difficulties reported by mid - tier firms in issuing mrel, in december 2020 we flexed our policy to give this subset of firms an additional year to comply with their end - state mrel requirements. 15 we have encouraged a broad dialogue on our policy on mrel thresholds throughout its development, and reaffirmed in 2018 that we would review its calibration and the final compliance date prior to setting end - state mrels. as a first step in that review, we issued a discussion paper in december 2020 to gather feedback and ideas from stakeholders to inform our views16. in particular, the discussion paper focuses on the thresholds for resolution strategies, the calibration of the requirements, the eligibility of instruments and the application of mrel within banking groups. the window for responses to that paper is open until 18th march this year, and we would welcome thoughts from any of you on any of these issues. we plan to publish a consultation paper in summer this year, informed by those responses and setting out any proposed changes to the mrel framework, ahead of publishing our revised policy by the end of 2021. while i am satisfied with the progress the uk resolution regime is making towards our 2022 commitment, the uk ’ s role as a global financial centre in an open and global financial system is much wider. we therefore place great importance on having strong and effective common global regulatory standards and cross - border cooperation. the uk continues to play a proactive role in global forums such as the financial stability board for policy development and supporting cross - border resolution planning. keeping resolvability in the spotlight on the international stage continues to be an important way for us to lean against fragmentary behaviour. i this is the formal, legal term for the required loss absorbing capacity that can readily be used in a resolution. as set out in our june 2018 statement of policy on the bank ’ s approach to setting mrel. as set out in the statement of policy, the indicative thresholds are 40, 000 to 80, 000 transactional accounts for partial transfer strategies, and a balance sheet size of £15bn to

for uk monetary policy is for it to be set at the right level to lay the foundations for a stable economy. in that regard, we should bear in mind that the economy will always be subject to unforeseen shocks which tend to push it away from stability for a period of time. the job of the mpc is to with such a large change in the nominal exchange rate, one only needs to be slightly out in estimating the marginal impact to generate large errors in the total impact. bis central bankers ’ speeches react to those shocks by bringing inflation back to target and, subject to that primary objective, in a manner which helps sustain output and employment. as well as inflation back around target, we have also seen a resurgence in growth over the past year. it was difficult to explain the suddenness of the change in sentiment which accompanied the recovery during 2013 but growth in itself should not be regarded as surprising. it is the near stagnation from 2010 – 12 which was harder to understand. we have been stimulating the economy with historically extreme levels of monetary policy for a long time and a variety of headwinds ( including the problems in the euro area, a tightening of credit conditions, the drag on activity from fiscal consolidation, and a squeeze in household real incomes resulting from the fall in productivity and higher energy and commodity prices ) have all contributed to limit the effect of that stimulus. what seems to have happened in 2013 is that at least some of those headwinds were perceived to have diminished, allowing the policy stimulus to come through and the resulting growth has generated the renewed consumer and business confidence which reinforces demand. we are very conscious that the headwinds have not gone away : much of europe and some other parts of the world continue to struggle for sustained growth ; fiscal consolidation in the uk ( and elsewhere ) is likely to continue for a while to come ; and the financial sector still needs some rebuilding. indeed, the official production and construction data released earlier this month were rather disappointing, reminding us that strong growth from here on is by no means guaranteed. but to varying degrees perhaps the very worst of the storms may be behind us. just a tailing off in some of their negative impacts may have been sufficient to allow the economy to start growing again. interest rates and forward guidance so why aren ’ t we moving to tighten policy straight away, why did we issue forward guidance around monetary policy? the answer is in the levels of output and employment, not their growth rates. after