Has “quantitative easing” been a success or a failure? Should it be dropped, continued or expanded? With base rates virtually as low as they can go and therefore no longer effective as an instrument to boost the economy, the Bank of England’s views on QE have become a central talking point.

As the Bank governor, Mervyn King, explained in March, the purpose of QE was to increase “the amount of money that’s held by the wider economy”. The thinking was that extra money “would influence decisions to spend directly” as well as “decisions to re-allocate assets which might increase the value of those assets”. It would lead people “to feel better off and, hence, to spend”.