The Bank of England has maintained the base rate at 0.5 per cent and kept the size of the asset purchase programme at £325bn.

The last meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee was held on 4-5 April.

The Committee said it expected the latest round of quantitative easing, which added £50bn to the programme in February, to take one more month to complete.

It is unknown if any more quantitative easing will be carried out once that is complete although, according to the minutes of March’s meeting David Miles and Adam Posen have been keen for an additional £50bn of easing.

Interest rates have now been kept at this rate for over three years and they were last changed in March 2009.

John McNeill, head of international rates at Kames Capital, said: “Recent UK economic data has been slightly better than feared but remains consistent with the sort of sub-par recoveries which are the norm in the aftermath of financial crises.

“There are clearly some on the Committee who believe that further monetary easing is required but the balance of the MPC is likely to want to judge the effect of the easing already enacted.”

Further details of the decision will be given in the minutes of the meeting which will be released on 18 April.