Monetary Policy Committee member Silvana Tenreyro yesterday declared the Bank of England had likely “already done enough” through interest-rate rises to address inflation ahead of last week’s meeting.

The nine-strong Bank committee voted to hike UK base rates, which were at a record low of 0.1% late last year, from 2.25% to 3% when it met last week.

Ms Tenreyro, who voted for only a quarter-point rise in rates last week, said in a speech in London yesterday: “Calibrating the required level of interest rates needs to take account of the rapid pace of tightening to date and the lag before its full impact on the economy. This is the fastest tightening in policy in the MPC’s history, with interest rates rising almost three percentage points in 12 months.”

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Explaining her decision last week, Ms Tenreyro said the Bank’s latest inflation forecasts “suggested to me that policy was already in restrictive territory ahead of our November meeting”.

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She added: “Given the policy lags...it had probably been restrictive for some time before. Moreover, since our convention is to only incorporate announced fiscal policy, those forecasts did not include any potential tightening in the fiscal stance. I judged that in the most likely scenario, we had already done enough to bring inflation rapidly back to, and then below target.

“Despite that, I voted in November for a further 0.25 percentage point increase in Bank Rate, to 2.5%. My main rationale for a further tightening was risk management. While forecasts are essential to forward-looking policy, they are also inherently uncertain. Most obviously, our inflation forecast is highly dependent on the path for energy prices. But we also face two key uncertainties over how quickly and how far domestic wage and price inflation will weaken.”

The Bank’s Treasury-set target is for annual consumer prices index inflation of 2%. Annual CPI inflation was 10.1% in September.

Ms Tenreyro said: “With Bank Rate held at its new level of 3%, the MPC’s modal forecast was for CPI inflation to fall back to target after 18 months, before falling further below target, to 0.8%, by the end of the third year of the forecast. The economy would still fall into recession, although this would be less severe, and demand would stay persistently below potential. Even at the previous level of Bank Rate at 2.25%, inflation was most likely to fall below target in the medium term.”