In the minutes from its meeting on 9-10 November the Committee all agreed on currently maintaining the size of the asset purchase programme but were split by future decisions.

Some £75bn was added to the asset purchase programme in October and this is expected to take three months to complete.

It was not judged appropriate to make any more purchases but some members felt “a further expansion of the asset purchase programme might well be warranted in due course.”

The reason for this was the balance of risks to inflation, noted in the November Inflation Report, and the impact of events happening abroad.

However, other members judged the risks were more balanced and pointed out that “market capacity made it very difficult to increase the monthly rate of purchases substantially above what was already underway.”

“It was noted that inflation was currently materially above the target and it remained a possibility that it would be slower to fall during 2012 than the pace implied by the Committee’s central projections.

“Given the imprecision with which the appropriate stance of policy could be calibrated at this juncture, there was little merit in fine tuning.”

The Committee hoped inflation would fall by around 1.5 to 2 percentage points between late 2011 and the end of Q1 2012.

The next MPC meeting will be held on 7-8 December.