the bank and fca will convene an industry - led “ technology working group ” to bring together different financial market stakeholders to catalyse collective action and reform in the use of technology in the post - trade system. this may help in identifying a way forward on reducing the e cost and inefficiencies in the post - trade processing of financial market transactions, reducing complexity and increasing system - level resilience. the work will stocktake current and emerging post - trade technology solutions, identify key pinch points and barriers to adoption across markets and products, and look at the cost and benefits of different solutions to address these barriers. conclusion the post - trade system is a key component of a bigger effective, efficient, and resilient financial system ; one much reformed since the financial crisis of eleven years ago. a key feature of the financial system is it is one of multiple interdependencies, and it is this interdependent nature which is why i chose to focus on resilience and innovation today on the face of it, these two concepts are quite different – one referring to the ability to return to a previous state, the other referring to making change. but in practise they are irrevocably linked. an environment that prioritises resilience and innovation is one that ensures post - trade continues to thrive and adapt to technology, finance, and wider changes in the economy, whilst avoiding costly fragmentation. the bank is playing its part here, with strategic goals on the one hand focussing on the need to innovate and drive change ( fintech ; rtgs ), but on the other on maintaining resilience ( operational resilience ; rtgs ) – demonstrates that well. that ’ s why we ’ re focussing on providing a platform, via the right hard and soft infrastructure, for innovation to flourish. and why we will never slacken our focus on the criticality of resilience. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / publications / pages / speeches / default. aspx

example, the latest cbi survey shows 62 % of manufacturers reporting some spare capacity – which is virtually in line with the average for the decade before the financial crisis. 6 the evidence on wages and prices is also consistent with the view that spare capacity is not exerting as much downward pressure on inflation as the mpc expected last summer. in the manufacturing sector, underlying wage growth is back up to the 4 – 5 % level already, though is more subdued in the services sector. and after quite widespread pay freezes last year, the latest pay settlements data from income data services show that the most popular range for pay settlements is currently 2 – 3 %, which is where four out of ten pay settlements are now being struck. if the recovery continues and headline inflation remains relatively high, there may be a further upward drift in pay growth in the private sector, offsetting some of the downward pressure on wage growth from the public sector. uk inflation performance that brings me to the final area where the uk economy has performed very differently to expectations last summer – headline inflation. the uk has just experienced the second significant upward spike in inflation in the last couple of years. since the beginning of 2008, when the financial crisis and the ensuing recession might have been expected to push down inflation, consumer price inflation in the uk has averaged 3 % – above the 2 % target and more than one percentage point higher than average cpi inflation in the pre - recession period of growth. our inflation rate is clearly influenced by external factors in the world economy, such as a volatile oil price, and these have clearly made the control of inflation more difficult over the last two or three years. but if these global forces were solely to blame for higher inflation, they would be having a similar effect in other major economies. as chart 6 shows, the us and the euro area have seen lower and more stable inflation over the last couple of years, with inflation averaging around 1¾ % since the beginning of 2008. us inflation has recently been pushed up to over 2 % by higher petrol prices, but to a much lesser extent than in the uk. according to the labour force survey measure, unemployment peaked at 11. 9 % in mid - 1984 and 10. 6 % in early 1993. approximately two years after the start of the recession in both cases, unemployment was 10. 2 % at end - 1981 and 10. 4 % at end - 1992. in the april 2010 quarterly industrial trends survey, 62 % of manufacturers reported that they were working