⁍ Cutting interest rates below zero risks damaging British banks’ capacity to lend, Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden said.

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⁍ Economists polled by Reuters expect the BoE to expand its asset purchase programme by 100 billion pounds next month.

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⁍ BoE Governor Andrew Bailey said the central bank was looking more closely at negative interest rates.

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– The Bank of England isn’t exactly jumping on the bandwagon when it comes to using negative interest rates. “While there might be an appropriate time to use negative rates, that time is not right now,” deputy governor Dave Ramsden said at a conference today, according to Reuters. That’s because it would damage banks’ ability to lend, and it’s not the right time for them to do so, Ramsden said. Another deputy governor, Andy Haldane, said in August that the BoE was looking into the possibility of using negative rates, but that didn’t seem to be the case today. “There can be knock-on economic effects through the banking system,” Ramsden said. “These effects could reduce or even counteract the stimulus from negative rates.”