MPC's Bean: We were close to raising rates before Europe crisis

The deputy governor of the Bank of England has revealed how the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) nearly raised rates earlier this year, before the downturn hit markets.

Charles Bean said as recently as May there were calls from a substantial section of the MPC to raise rates from their historic low of 0.5%. Speaking to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), Bean said: "As recently as our May meeting, a third of the Committee were voting to raise the Bank rate from its emergency level of 0.5%. "Although I did not join them in voting to raise the Bank rate, I did view the arguments for and against a tightening as being finely balanced." However, he said such was the deterioration in the outlook since then, the MPC was forced to expand its quantitati...