The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted to leave interest rates unchanged at 4% at its September meeting, but more controversial still is its annual decision over the reversal of its crisis-era quantitative easing programme.
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Over the last two years, the Bank has been in the midst of actively selling off bonds bought during the financial crisis and COVID-19, as part of its economic rescue measures. Those amounts were averaging out at £100bn a year.
Today, the Bank announced it is reducing the annual sale rate to £70bn a year.
It has also announced it will, in future, be selling fewer long-dated government bonds.
“The new target means the MPC can continue to reduce the size of the Bank’s balance sheet in line with its monetary policy objectives while continuing to minimise the impact on gilt [government bond] market conditions,” said governor Andrew Bailey.
On the interest rate decision, Mr Bailey said, “We held interest rates at 4% today. Although we expect inflation to return to our 2% target, we’re not out of the woods yet so any future cuts will need to be made gradually and carefully.”
The decision was not unanimous, with two of the seven MPC members voting to cut the base interest rate by 0.25 percentage points.
