Paul Tucker, the deputy governor for financial stability at the Bank of England, raised eyebrows this week when he seemed to indicate he would be open to a rate rise in the UK.

Tucker said he fell into the camp that "from the back end of last year has worried about the possibility of an upward drift in inflation expectations".

"The longer inflation remains so high, the more likely it is that when we say it's a one-off factor the people of this country will think: ‘they use one-off event in a