The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee today voted to reduce the official Bank Rate paid on commercial bank reserves by 0.25 percentage points to 5.25%.

Against that background, the Committee judged that a reduction in Bank Rate of 0.25 percentage points to 5.25% was necessary to meet the 2% target for CPI inflation in the medium term.

The minutes of the meeting will be published at 9.30am on Wednesday 20th February.

The previous change in Bank Rate was a reduction of 0.25 percentage points to 5.5% on 6 December 2007.