Bank ‘unlikely to make sudden switch’

Economists believe Mark Carney will wait for at least a year before changing monetary policy at the Bank of England.

Carney replaces Sir Mervyn King as the Bank’s governor in July, and a Reuters poll of 66 economists found they did not expect any shift in interest rates away from their record low of 0.5 per cent until July 2014 at the earliest.

Any increase to the Bank’s £375 billion pound quantitative easing programme is also seen as unlikely, as inflation remains above the 2 per cent target.