In a Treasury Committee meeting yesterday, when asked whether there was anything the Bank could have done to have shaped monetary policy differently over the last year, Bailey responded saying, ‘I don’t think we could’.

Defending Threadneedle Street before an announcement tomorrow of the sharpest annual increase in interest rates for four decades, Bailey told the Committee that while he was unhappy about the level of price rises, 80% of the inflation target overshoot was caused by factors outside the Bank’s control.

The war in Ukraine, Brexit, and the Covid-19 pandemic, in particular China’s zero-Covid policy, were the three main issues highlighted by the Bank as being the cause of the spiralling rise in inflation rates with the Ukraine war being described as the ‘big one’ due to the cutting off of energy supplies from Russia.

Bai