Two members dissented from BoE decision to maintain Bank Rate, minutes show

As expected, at its meeting of 6 November the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) opted to keep its main policy rate unchanged at 0.5% by a margin of seven votes in favour and two against.

The two dissenters, as was expected, were Ian McCafferty and Martin Weale both of whom would have preferred to increase Bank Rate by 25 basis points.

The decision to maintain the stock of purchased assets under the Bank’s asset purchase facility was unanimous.

The minutes showed that among the seven members voting to keep interest rates on hold, “there was a material spread of views on the balance of risks to the outlook”.

Economist Sam Tombs at Capital Economics said this indicated that "it might not take much positive news" for some other members to join McCafferty and Weale in voting to raise interest rates.

He noted that some members were more concerned that spare capacity would be used up more quickly than in the Inflation Report forecasts, and that there was therefore a risk that inflation overshot the 2% target within the next three years.

As of 09:37 cable was higher by 0.12% to 1.5646 in the immediate aftermath of the release.