The Bank of England’s monetary policy committee surprised the market on Thursday by announcing it would not expand its programme of quantitative easing beyond the £125bn already authorised, but said it would review the decision at its August meeting which takes place just before its next quarterly inflation report.

In a brief official statement, the Bank said: “The committee expects that the announced programme will take another month to complete. The committee will review the scale of the programme again at its August meeting, alongside its latest inflation projections.”