Buoyant service sector comes to the rescue

Further stimulus may still be on its way, however, after Chancellor George Osborne tweaked the central bank’s mandate two weeks ago.

He gave the Bank stronger backing to ignore the series of one-off factors that have kept inflation above target for most of the time since the financial crisis.

The remit also paves the way for a broader review of the Bank of England’s monetary policy when Mark Carney, who currently heads Canada’s central bank, succeeds Bank Governor Mervyn King in July.

But for now there is no majority on the nine-member Monetary Policy Committee to add to the £375bn of gilts it bought between March 2009 and October 2012, in line with economists’ expectations.