The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has once again voted to hold interest rates at 4.5%.
This is the 11th consecutive month the MPC has kept rates on hold after it lowered the base rate from 4.75% in August 2005. It also follows this morning’s release of mortgage equity withdrawal figures from the Bank for the first quarter of 2006. According to the statistics mortgage equity withdrawal stood at £12.5bn, £0.4bn higher than the revised estimate of £12.1bn for the final quarter of 2005 Meanwhile the Nationwide quarterly review of house price growth, also released this morning, shows England lagging behind in house price growth while Scotland and Northern Ireland are showing ra...
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