Lamont replaced Major as Chancellor in Major's new Cabinet, thereby inheriting Major's exchange rate policy. In his memoirs, Lamont recalls a senior Treasury civil servant answering his question on why Britain had joined the ERM as replying, "It's politics," to which Lamont replied, "I don't think I would have given up the flexibility of the exchange rate." In public, Lamont justified the decision to join the ERM in terms of the government's counter-inflation strategy. In the House of Commons debate shortly after the pound joined the ERM, he argued that under a regime of floating exchange rates, the consequences of depreciating the currency had been short lived in terms of output and competitiveness, "but have been lasting in terms of inflation. That is one of the reasons why the Government concluded that it would be right to join the ERM."