At its June meeting held on Thursday, the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) held its official rate, known as Bank Rate, steady at 0.50%. Normally, a decision to do nothing would pass without much comment but, in this case, a couple of interesting developments have taken place
Firstly, the number of members who voted in favour of a rate rise changed from two to three as the BoE’s chief economist moved to increase. Andrew Haldane joined the MPC in 2014 and he has voted in line with the majority view each time until now. He joins known monetary policy “hawks”, Ian McCafferty and Michael Saunders, as dissenters to the decision to hold Bank Rate steady.
