i mentioned earlier. but, crucially, it would be for the senior manager to satisfy the regulator on the question of reasonableness – thus the presumption is created until it is rebutted. the change that the government has announced to create “ the duty of responsibility ” will, if parliament approves it, replace the presumption with a statutory duty on senior managers to take reasonable steps to prevent breaches of regulatory requirements by their firms from occurring. thus it will be for the regulator to show that the senior manager did not take such steps as it was reasonable for a person in that position to take to prevent the breach of regulatory requirements. in my view this does not represent a watering down of the requirement. why? well the “ duty of responsibility ” creates a positive duty on senior managers to take reasonable steps to prevent regulatory breaches occurring. this will be on a statutory footing, which hardwires the concept in the very fabric of the regulatory regime, rightly reflecting the importance which society places on this issue. let me be very clear, substituting “ duty ” for “ presumption ” changes the mechanism of enforcement not the substance of the requirement on senior managers, and i would not support changing the latter. there has been a lot of noise around the new regime in recent months, and i have asked people involved whether their problem was with the “ presumption ”, or with the regime more broadly. the universal answer has been that the difficulty was with the “ presumption ” not the regime which appears to have broad support. so, if parliament is in agreement, and i do not presume to take that for granted, i expect that the new regime will be put into effect in the spirit with which it is intended, and that the focus bis central bankers ’ speeches will shift to that spirit and away from finding ways to circumvent the “ presumption ”. to be blunt, i hope that those within firms and their advisors will respect the will of parliament on this crucial point. the new regime matters hugely for getting the right incentives for people running firms. the important word is not “ presumption ” or “ duty but rather “ responsibility ”, it ’ s about holding people more personally to account. if there are people who wish to argue that they should not take on the responsibilities of the job they do, then i believe they have no place in the industry, it ’ s that simple. we all want well - run firms

qe as an economic policy tool - what does it do and how should we use it? speech given by dave ramsden, deputy governor for markets and banking peter sinclair town hall lecture, university of birmingham 17th february 2021 with thanks to tom smith, amy lee and jon bridges for their assistance in preparing these remarks, and to bank colleagues including andrew hauser, maggie illingworth, mike joyce, nick mclaren, rhys phillips, and beth blowers for their many helpful comments and suggestions. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches and @ boe _ pressoffice introduction it ’ s a pleasure to be speaking today at the university of birmingham, and an honour to be doing so at the third peter sinclair town hall lecture. my focus today is on quantitative easing – qe for short – and its use as an economic policy tool. the bank of england ’ s internal independent evaluation office ( ieo ) published its own evaluation of qe earlier this year, where it noted that “ there remain open debates about how qe works in different states of the world, its broader interlinkages and its potential limitations ”. 1 what i want to use my lecture for today is to set out my own views on qe as a policy tool, as well as contribute some thoughts to some of those debates. before i do that, though, i want to start with my own recollections of peter. tim harford began this lecture series last autumn by noting that he was an economist because of peter, as is true, i am sure, of many people joining us today. i can actually take it further. i was first enthused by economics by one of peter ’ s students, the late ken durham, like peter also a great teacher and educator, who taught me economics at school and encouraged me to apply to brasenose college. the only bit of the whole application process to brasenose which went well was my economics interview with peter, which i remember as much more of a friendly conversation than an interrogation. that set the tone and started an unbroken trend for every one of my interactions with peter over the next 37 years, whether in brasenose, or over one of his famed pastoral teas in the cafe in the oxford covered market, at one of the seminars he would invite me to give to his students at the bank ’ s ccbs while he was its director, through to more recently in the