Reuters has an exclusive interview with one of the Bank of England’s more cautious monetary policy committee members this morning, suggesting there hasn’t yet been enough evidence of cooling inflation to know that rate cuts are a good idea for the economy.
Jonathan Haskel was one of two MPC members who, last week, voted to raise the interest rate from 5.25% to 5.5%. Six members voted to hold and one voted to cut.
“I’m not going to apologise for banging on about persistence because I think we’re right to,” he told the news service, adding that the fall in inflation so far from 11.1% to 4% did not necessarily mean the future will be a low-inflation environment.
“The signs that we’ve seen thus far are encouraging. I don’t think we’ve seen quite enough signs yet,” Haskel said. “But if we accumulate more evidence on persistence, then by the very logic I’ve just set out, I’d be happy to change my vote.”