Make jobs higher priority, Gordon Brown tells Bank of England

Former prime minister calls for Bank to take employment into account when setting policies

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Former prime minister Gordon Brown has attacked the Bank of England for failing to place enough emphasis on jobs, as he called for a rethink of the model of independence he created for Threadneedle Street in the late 1990s.

Brown, who as chancellor in Tony Blair's government was responsible for granting the Bank operational freedom to set interest rates, said the UK's central bank should be more like the US Federal Reserve, which has to take employment as well as inflation into account when making policy decisions.