Bank of England votes 5-4 against more stimulus

It was only the fourth time Sir Mervyn King had been outvoted since taking over in 2003 but the minutes suggested opinion would likely swing to his side in July.

''Most members judged that some further stimulus was either warranted immediately or would probably become warranted,'' noted the minutes to the June Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting.

Sir Mervyn, David Miles and Adam Posen voted for £50 billion additional quantitative easing (QE) while Paul Fisher was in favour of another £25 billion. The rest of the five MPC members opted to leave QE unchanged at £325 billion. All voted to keep the rates at 0.5 per cent.

MPC member Ben Broadbent said he might back those calling for more QE next month, saying, ''I would certainly say the case has grown since May for some sort of intervention.''

The close vote came as a surprise as Miles had been the only MPC member to back an increase in May, of just £25 billion.

According to George Buckley, economist at Deutsche Bank, he expected £50 billion more QE on 5 July as Kevin Daly, of Goldman Sachs, said the minutes ''shift the likelihood sharply in favour of a July move, rather than waiting until August''.