Silvana Tenreyro, a member of the Bank of England's (BoE) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), said that with further increases in energy costs and tradable goods prices inflationary pressures are now set to be larger and likely more persistent than previously expected.
She also suggested that further modest tightening would therefore be consistent with inflation returning to the BoE's target sustainably, but added that the exact scale of tightening required is uncertain.
In her opinion, the impact of the BoE's February rate hike is more likely to have its peak impact when inflation is still above target than if we had waited too much longer.
Tenreyro also said that her policy decisions will seek to manage any temporary trade-offs that arise between inflation and the volatility of output.