With issues at the ONS are you flying blind?

Bailey: We look at a suite of data that give us together a pretty good read on the state of the labour market in terms of employment and unemployment. We have seen for some time the response in the LFS has been coming down. The ONS had to switch from in person to telephone interviewing and the response rate has come down further and the ONS has said it is no longer representative. For some time have been looking at a suite of indicators as it gives a better read. The official measure has been quite volatile in the short-term and the one from the quite is smoother but not inconsistent. That's relative as well as the volatility we don't want to copy across into our view of the economy.

Broadbent: This is not a UK-specific story for falling response rates and we welcome the ONS's changes from December and next Spring. On the employment side, the MPC is not missing that much over the next 2-3 months. Have always run models on what's going on with employment from surveys - get a pretty good view from those. The split of non-employment between non-employment and inactivity we have less sources of information. But we do have the claimant count.