Carney says will make outcome of EU referendum work
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's relationship with the European Union is working but the Bank of England will do whatever is needed to adapt should Britons vote to leave the bloc in a referendum, BoE Governor Mark Carney said on Wednesday.
"Our job is to make whatever the British people decide work," he told Sky News. "And there's a status quo, we're making that work and we think it is working, but if things change we will do what's necessary."
Britain is due to vote before the end of 2017 on whether to stay in the EU, and Carney attracted criticism last month from anti-EU campaigners after he delivered an upbeat assessment of membership of the bloc.
On Wednesday he said neither he nor the BoE had an institutional view on whether Britain should stay in the EU.
The central bank has previously said it is making contingency plans in case of financial market turmoil in the run-up to or aftermath of the vote, which does not yet have a date.
Carney also said he had not changed his mind on serving a single five-year term at the bank after speculation that he could stay for longer.
Last week he said it was "far too early" to comment on whether he would stay beyond five years.
The BoE is holding a conference on the future of British financial regulation in London on Wednesday, and Carney said the financial sector had further to go before it commanded public respect, let alone affection.
"Neither I nor my successors will be 'hugging a banker'. Ultimately we want to get to a point where people can respect bankers," Carney said, adding in a later BBC interview that he understood the public's mistrust of banks.
Earlier on Wednesday the chairman of Barclays, who heads an industry lobby group, said a new tax on banks posed a long-term threat to Britain's attractiveness to the financial sector.
(Reporting by Kate Holton and David Milliken, editing by Estelle Shirbon and John Stonestreet)
