Bank of England Holds Interest Rates, Slows Pace of Bond Sales

The Bank of England on Wednesday left its main interest rate unchanged and said it would slow the pace of its bond-selling programme, known as quantitative tightening (QT), according to the Guardian's live coverage of the announcement.

The decision to ease the speed of QT comes after the central bank faced calls from some quarters to slow or halt the sale of government bonds in order to help reduce UK government borrowing costs, the report said.

The Guardian's coverage also referenced editorial commentary describing the Bank's bond-related decisions as carrying significant financial stakes, with one piece characterising the scale of the programme's cost to the public purse as substantial, though specific figures were not detailed in the excerpt.

Separately, the Office for National Statistics released a new measure of productivity showing that annual UK productivity growth since 1997 — the year of Tony Blair's first general election victory — has been stronger than previously estimated, according to the report.

The revised ONS figures suggest that Britain's economy has been more productive over the nearly three-decade period than earlier statistics indicated, though the source did not provide the specific revised growth figures.

Further details on the Bank of England's monetary policy committee vote, the precise change in the QT pace, and the full ONS productivity dataset were not included in the available excerpt.