Other laws being broken
So Mandy wants a framework pushed through Parliament that lets him write illegal laws by ministerial dictate. How is this surprising? Home Office regularly breaks human rights laws with impunity (e.g. DNA), even the treasury breaks laws when it wants (my pet hate, currency scams):
Take a look at the Maastricht treaty section 101 which outlaws central banks buying government debt, or creating government overdrafts. This is there to prevent another collapsed currency.
Bank of England QE is being used to buy government debt from the market to prop up the price, this is not legal, Bank of Englands response is to claim it is legal as long as it's being used to meet an inflation target. Yet inflation is above it's predicted targets and it's still using QE money to buy government debt. Lets not kid ourselves here, Brown is gambling he doesn't collapse the currency before an election.
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetarypolicy/qe/askqa.htm
Read section 6, my comments in []
"6. Are you not simply monetising government debt? Is there any economic distinction between buying government debt in the secondary market from buying it directly from the Government?"
" The key point is that the Bank is not being forced to create money in order to cover the gap between the government’s tax income and its spending commitments [irrelevant]. If it were carried out to finance the budget deficit [no it's illegal for whatever reason], it would be a violation of Article 101 of the Maastricht Treaty (which the United Kingdom must abide by, even though it is not a member of the euro zone). Rather, the Bank is undertaking quantitative easing in order to meet the inflation target [inflation is ABOVE target] and will sell the government debt back to the private sector once the economy recovers, thus unwinding the original increase in the money supply [QE was done to PREVENT the decrease in money supply, so this 'unwinding' will never happen]."
" Central banks routinely buy and sell government debt in the secondary market as part of their normal operations in the money markets and such operations are not deemed to amount to monetary financing under the Maastricht Treaty. The only thing that distinguishes quantitative easing from normal operations is their scale and the length of time for which the assets are likely to be held"
Not only can the BOE *NOT* sell the gilts, routinely or otherwise, it can NOT STOP buying, because there is no market for government debt at that price and Brown continues to run the government at a huge deficit and will continue to do so right up to the election.
So to pretend the BOE is just doing something routing is political bullshit, the Bank of England is not independent if it simply used to prop up Browns spending plans, and it needs to protect the currency, even from Brown & Darling.