meet monthly; its membership comprise the Governor, two Deputy Governors, two of the Bank's Executive Directors and four members appointed by the Chancellor. It should publish minutes of all meetings within six weeks (in October 1998 the committee announced plans to publish far more quickly, after only one). The Act gave the government responsibility for specifying its price stability target and growth and employment objectives at least annually. The original inflation target the government set for the MPC was 2.5% per year on the RPI-X measure of inflation, but in 2003 this was changed to 2% on CPI. The government reserved the right to instruct the Bank on what rate to set in times of emergency. The years 1998 to 2006 witnessed an unprecedented period of price stability – during which inflation stayed within a percentage point of the target – despite earlier predictions that it could sit outside the range forty or more percent of the time. A 2007 report produced for the Treasury Committee noted that the MPC's independence of government "has reduced the scope for short-term political considerations to enter into the determination of interest rates". The creation of the MPC, it said, brought with it "an immediate credibility gain". During this time, the MPC kept interest rates relatively stable between 3.5% and 7.5%. However, the financial crisis of 2007–08 ended this period of stability, and, on 16 April 2007, the governor (at that time Mervyn King), was obliged to write the first MPC open letter to the chancellor (Gordon Brown), explaining why the inflation had deviated from the target of 2% per year by more than one percentage point (3.1%). By February 2013, he had had to write 14 such letters to chancellors. Between October 2008 and March 2009 the base rate was cut six times to an all-time low of 0.5% in order to avoid deflation and spur growth. In March 2009, the MPC launched a programme of quantitative easing, initially injecting £75 billion into the economy. By March 2010, it had also increased the amount of money set aside for quantitative easing to £200 billion, a figure later increased by a further £75 billion in the months following October 2011. The MPC announced two further £50 billion rounds of quantitative easing in February and July 2012, bringing the total to £375 billion whilst simultaneously keeping the base rate at 0.5%. In March 2013, the