to stay close to its current level and perhaps move up to 4 %, as demand and gdp in the economy remains weak. but i am materially less confident that after that unemployment will pick up quite markedly to end 2023 at close to 5 % as in the mpr forecasts, which are consistent with the past relationship between gdp and unemployment. there are many other judgements in the forecast where the risks for me are more balanced but similarly uncertain given the sources of uncertainty present. i am not advocating ignoring the forecast in the framing and setting of policy and relying instead on current, spot economic data. but i do support the mpc continuing to be more explicit in recognising the uncertainties inherent in the future path of the economy and in the forecasting process. one consequence of this approach is that i am more sensitive to errors in the short - term forecast than i am to forecast changes further out. a cross - check on the mpc forecast is to compare with other forecasters, which we facilitate by including an annex on other forecasters expectations in every mpr ( chart 9 ). because the period running up to the november mpc was marked by particular volatility in financial markets, other forecasts were more likely than usual to be based on different assumptions to the mpr forecasts. even allowing for that, the differences are noteworthy though also reflective of the uncertainties forecasters have to contend with at present, both on the demand side and the supply side. bank of england all other forecasts for gdp in each of the three years from 2023 to 2025 were above the mpc ’ s modal projection. there was a similarly marked difference after the first year of the forecast period for unemployment. for inflation the mpc ’ s modal forecast was in the top half of the range for outside forecasts in 2023q4 but below the bottom of the range in 2024q4 and 2025q4. notes : thirteen respondents submitted projections. there are 12 - 13 projections for each variable at the one - year horizon, and 7 - 8 for each variable at the two and three - year horizons. both the setting of monetary policy and the language used to communicate it have developed significantly over the last year, which has seen the mpc increase bank rate at every one of the eight meetings by a cumulative 2. 9 % to 3. 0 %. by contrast, the mpc ’ s approach to quantitative tightening has not changed. consistent with

actors out there, sometimes state - sponsored, who may be motivated to bring systems down and cause harm to the sector. second it is adaptive and changing. attackers do not stand still. attack types are constantly evolving and readily scalable. in the cyber arms race, costs are stacked in favour of the attacker, not the defender. organisations cannot rely on building a hard perimeter. they too need to develop defensive capability that is adaptive and invest in threat intelligence to understand potential attackers and attack types. third detection is not easy. compromise of networks or attacks themselves will not always be obvious. diagnosis may take time. by contrast physical threats to operational resilience – bombs, fires, floods – are immediately apparent. and apparent too to the rest of the sector. fourth capacity to recover may be threatened. standard approaches to achieving continuity – operating with common systems environments between primary and secondary sites and mirroring data between the two, could, in the face of a successful cyber attack, be vulnerable to complete loss of applications or destruction of data, disrupting a firm ’ s capacity to operate and leaving the timeframe and route to recovery uncertain. hence the fpc recommendation in 2013 that relevant authorities should undertake work to test and improve resilience to cyber attack of the firms at the heart of the financial system 2. you will have seen from the fsr published yesterday 3 that interest in and awareness of this risk continues to grow. this is why it is so vital that firms – and authorities – take the necessary action to address their cyber vulnerabilities. in response to the fpc ’ s 2013 recommendation our work has been mostly diagnostic, concentrating on assessing the vulnerability of the uk financial sector to cyber attack. our focus has been twofold : a cross - sector review of current risk management processes via a detailed firm self - assessment questionnaire and bespoke voluntary vulnerability testing, known as cbest 4. the conclusions we have drawn from this work can be broken down into three core areas : 1. defensive capabilities http : / / www. bankofengland. co. uk / publications / documents / records / fpc / pdf / 2013 / record1307. pdf. http : / / www. bankofengland. co. uk / publications / pages / fsr / 2015 / jul. aspx. http : / / www. bankofengland. co. uk / financialstability / fsc / pages / cbest. aspx. bis central