Quantitative easing has helped prevent a severe shrinkage of the money supply, the governor of the Bank of England said on Tuesday.

Mervyn King, the governor, told the Treasury Select Committee, an influential group of lawmakers, that without quantitative easing, Britain would have been subjected to "a very serious monetary contraction."

Comparing the UK's money numbers with those for the euro area "tells us what would've happened if we hadn't have injected the money," he said. M3, the eurozone