BBC - Inside the Bank of England (2020)

With unprecedented access, this series goes inside the Bank of England during 2018 as it navigates turbulent economic times – including the challenges posed by Brexit.

Episode 1
The Bank of England influences our mortgage repayments, prints our cash and ensures our money holds its value, but few of us know how this powerful institution works behind closed doors.

The Bank is responsible for ensuring our money holds its value and it works tirelessly to protect the economy from the threat of high inflation. With unprecedented access, this episode reveals how the Bank influences inflation by setting the UK’s interest rate. Filmed during May 2018, the process is shown step by step as Bank staff analyse the state of the UK’s finances, leading to governor Mark Carney and other senior figures making their decision.

In the lead up to this interest rate announcement, the British press is feverish with speculation on what Governor Carney and his team will decide, but inside the Bank the meticulous work of monitoring the economy must carry on unhindered by outside influence.

In the north east of England, Mauricio Armellini, one of the Bank’s ‘agents’, is charged with gathering economic intelligence from businesses and charities across the UK. And in the Bank’s formidable monetary analysis division, Becky Maule and her colleagues are preparing for the daunting task of having their economic calculations dissected by the people who make the rate decision – the powerful monetary policy committee, chaired by governor Carney.

Crunching the numbers isn’t the only challenge faced by the Bank. It also has to explain its decision to journalists and the British public. As its May judgment approaches, Gareth Ramsay and the Bank’s communications team carefully plan how they will present the Bank’s decision.

Whilst its economists and press team prepare for the interest rate announcement, the Bank doubles-down on security. To prevent sensitive information being leaked, meeting rooms are checked for bugs and important documents aren’t allowed to leave the building. If they did, there is the risk that people in the outside could use the information to make millions by betting on the financial markets – and potentially de-stabilise the entire economy.

Hyper-security informs everything the Bank does – including its responsibility for printing the country’s entire supply of bank notes. In money vaults set deep underground, chief cashier Victoria Cleland oversees the storage of billions of pounds worth of newly printed fifties, twenties, tenners and fivers – all of them ready to be pumped into the economy. Nicknamed ‘the money lady’, Victoria’s signature is on every new note that the Bank produces, including some that most people never get to see. Used to underwrite the value of Scottish and Northern Irish bank notes, ‘titans’ are the most valuable notes that the Bank produces – each of them is worth a staggering 100 million pounds.

As interest rate decision day draws closer, Carney and the monetary policy committee debate the economic data and then vote on what the interest rate should be. But with the world’s press gathering to hear the decision and scrutinise the Bank’s thinking, unexpected news about the growth of the economy threatens to undermine the Bank’s carefully considered calculations.

Episode 2
For over 300 hundred years, the Bank of England has maintained a reputation for reliability and security. If you bring old bank notes to the bank, it will exchange them at face value, even if the notes are hundreds of years old. So secure are the Bank’s underground vaults that foreign governments entrust billions of pounds worth of gold to the Bank’s safekeeping.

Yet the Bank’s responsibilities are far greater and wider reaching than the gold it protects. Since the financial crisis a decade ago, it has been given significant new powers and a responsibility for policing the UK’s financial system. Filmed during 2018, this episode reveals how the bank is preparing for all eventualities, including the possible economic shock of Brexit and climate change.

It is October and with six months until the UK is due to leave the European Union, the government’s yet to agree a draft withdrawal treaty with Brussels. The possibility of a no-deal Brexit is increasing, and Parliament has tasked the bank with producing a special Brexit report, and to include a detailed analysis of the economic impact that leaving the EU without a deal could have.

In the bank’s financial stability area, executive director Alex Brazier and his team are busy assessing whether the UK’s financial system is strong enough to cope with a disorderly Brexit. To find out, they are subjecting the country’s biggest high street banks to stress tests, one of the most thorough economics examinations that they face. The tests reveal if they hold enough contingency funds to withstand a no deal. On everyone’s minds is the chaos that engulfed the economy a decade ago.

In 2008 the country’s banking system, and the Bank of England, were caught out by the financial crisis. High-street banks haemorrhaged money and stopped lending, the economy seized up and people queued in their thousands to take out their savings. The Bank of England lent hundreds of billions to bail out the banks, and catastrophic damage was done to businesses and livelihoods across the country. As a result of the crisis, the bank hired Mark Carney as governor and he is tasked with ensuring the UK’s banks have enough capital to avoid the same happening again.

Alongside the economic danger that a disorderly Brexit could pose, the bank is dealing with longer-term threats. The episode follows Carney and his team to New York, where, alongside the world’s leading politicians, he is announcing a major breakthrough in the bank’s efforts to protect the global economy from the effects of climate change. As well as causing trillions of pounds worth of physical damage, companies who invest in fossil fuels could see their assets wiped out as the world transitions away from a carbon economy. The Bank of England wants to ensure banks and businesses are prepared for anything that a future climate crisis might bring.

Back in the UK, as the government agrees a draft withdrawal deal with Europe and MPs prepare to vote on it, the release of the bank’s Brexit report is imminent. The bank’s press team - led by ex-journalist Mike Peacock - is feeling the pressure. Since the EU referendum in 2016, the bank has had to defend the governor against accusations that he is part of ‘project fear’, and they are bracing themselves for more heavy criticism when the bank’s report is published.

It is not just the press inquisition that Mike’s team has to prepare for - shortly after the report is published, the governor and his colleagues travel to Parliament to have their findings forensically examined by a committee of cross-party MPs.