§ Mr. Maxtonasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will provide a table on all movements of the base lending rate of the Bank of England from January 1970 to the present time.
§ Mr. Ian StewartThe banking department of the Bank of England has a base rate for lending to its private customers, but this has no significance for monetary policy and is not published.
Page 194 of the 1986 Economic Trends annual supplement gives the bank's minimum lending rate to the market, in the form of the bank rate up to 1972 and the minimum lending rate from then up to 1981. Since 1981 a minimum lending rate has not been posted on a continuous basis by the Bank of England.
London clearing banks' short-term money rates from 1971 are shown on page 195 of the Economic Trends 384W annual supplement and updated in the monthly Economic Trends. Before 1971, the rates of interest charged by London clearing banks were related to the bank rate.