The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has voted to keep the Bank Rate at 0.50%.

The central bank also chose to keep quantitative easing (QE) at £375 billion.

The Bank Rate has now remained unchanged since March 2009.

Andrew McPhillips, chief economist at Yorkshire Building Society, said: “This month’s MPC meeting was widely expected to be a formality in terms of the immediate decisions.

“The Bank is now into the final month of the latest round of asset purchases and it arguably makes sense to complete this before announcing a further round of QE. However, the MPC will be disappointed by recent data releases, notably the PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) indicators, and this does increase the probability of a further round of asset purchases before the end of the year.

“Alternatively the committee could hold back and let the Funding for Lending Scheme become the primary tool to provide stimulus if they are feeling confident about the prospects for the success of the scheme.

“The maintained Base Rate of 0.5% is as expected, given that it was not even discussed at the September meeting. In my view, there remains little to no benefit from a cut to the Base Rate and comments from MPC members outside of the official minutes suggest that they still hold this view.

“The release of the minutes later this month will be of greater interest to those in the financial markets though, to see if the much speculated November Base Rate cut looks more or less likely.”