Now is not the time for more quantitative easing – Bank chief

“There could be circumstances under which I would judge the right policy would be to embark on further asset purchases but that’s not how I’ve seen things thus far,” Mr Miles said in the interview with Dow Jones Newswires.

The Bank conducted £200bn of asset purchases with newly-created money between March 2009 and February 2010, and there has been speculation that the weakness of the global economy may prompt it to do more this year.

But Mr Miles said that the economy was strengthening.

“We are on a recovery path, but it’s fragile,” he said.

He added that the most likely outcome was that “activity does continue to increase, gross domestic product rises and we might get back to something closer to average rates of growth and inflation moves back down towards target level”.

His outlook broadly corresponds with the central scenario in the Bank’s quarterly inflation report published last Wednesday.

The Bank of England is represented in Yorkshire by agent Paul Fullerton, who gathers evidence on trading conditions from a large network of businesses across the region.

This evidence is fed back to the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee, which sets the cost of borrowing money and also decides on schemes like quantitative easing.

Last week, the Bank cut its growth forecasts and signalled interest rates will stay at record lows for a long while to come.