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 SOT Q: The monetary policy report says the government's fiscal policy is dampening growth. So, would adecision to raise taxes further in the autumn, as is widely expected in the city, risk sending the UKeconomy into a doom loop and even further dampen growth?And just to add, the banks obviously had accusations of groupthink in the past. Is this sort ofunprecedented vote today, or double vote? What does that say about the MPC as it is right now?Andrew Bailey (Governor of Bank of England) answering question SOT A: Sure. So two very different questions. I'll take them completely separately.So obviously, as you know, we condition our, view forward on announced fiscal policy. Obviously, theannounced fiscal policy that we are conditioning on at the moment is essentially the budget and thespring statement, that's where we are. And I'm not going to speculate on whatever the governmentmay or may not do in the period to come, that is obviously for the government. We will obviouslytake it into account, when it's announced and not before. So that's a very, very standard operatingprocedure and rule that we have. And that's how we will do it.Turning to the vote. You're right. I mean, this is the first time that we had two votes. Just to be veryclear on this, because it's set out in the minutes quite, I think, very clearly the distribution was fourmembers in the first vote. The distribution was four members, preferring to hold it at 4.25, fourmembers preferring a 25 basis point cut and one member preferring a cut of 50 basis points.Now, I'll just explain. Obviously there is a provision in the...