RUSHES: Bank of England press conference

Bank of England press conference; ENGLAND: London: Bank of England:INTClare Lombardelli (Deputy Governor for Monetary Policy, Bank of England), Andrew Bailey (Governor of Bank of England), Katie Martin (Head of Media and Stakeholder Engagement) and Dave Ramsden (Deputy Governor for Markets and Banking) press conference question and answer session SOTQ: Given everything you've just said, Dave, would it not be the case that the British public would berather confused that you're cutting rates today with the persistence of inflation that you've justoutlined, regardless of all the underlying crosscurrents that you also describe?Surely, they would be expecting you to hold rates today. They want you to tackle inflation. And aren'tyou going to just collectively encourage wage rises now? Aren't those workers now going to think,well, we've got inflation going through to next year. It's not going to be below 3% next year.We need to go and get higher wages, not lower.Dave Ramsden (Deputy Governor for Markets and Banking) answering question SOT A: I'm sure others will want to come in, but if I can start I think it's really, I take you back to a couple of things that Andrew said in his opening remarks. One is that the underlying disinflation process iscontinuing. We've been talking about this persistence in inflation for the best part of a couple ofyears. Our judgments on that persistence haven't changed, but that persistence certainly comparedto my expectations 18 months ago have, it is it has continued to manifest itself.But we are still seeing the underlying disinflation process continue. Andrew's just talked about wagesactually coming in slightly below our expectations. He also had a chart that showed services, onceyou services inflation once you strip out administered prices. Still on a declining trend.The other thing to bear in mind is that we've reduced bank rate today, but we think that policy is stillrestrictive. And that's ab...