Following an upwardly revised 0.1 percent monthly rise in October, M4 fell a fully 1.6 percent in November, its steepest decline this century, and reduced annual growth from 4.8 percent to 2.5 percent. The key private sector lending counterpart also contracted, sliding a monthly 0.7 percent to match its October drop and trim its yearly rate from 3.8 percent to 2.2 percent, an 11-month low.

Excluding intermediate other financial corporations, the picture was also weak with M4 down 0.9 percent versus October when it fell 0.7 percent. This cut annual growth by 1.5 percentage points to 4.1 percent. Similarly-adjusted lending decreased 0.7 percent after a 1.3 percent drop last time to reduce its yearly rate from 2.5 percent to just 1.6 percent, a 20-month trough.

However, elsewhere, mortgage lending (£4.36 billion after £3.58 billion) picked up despite a sharp fall in approvals (46,075 after 57,875) and more generally, total consumer credit (£1.507 billion after £0.748 billion) was double the October outturn and a 4-month high.

Today's mixed bag reflects some of the distortions caused by September's mini-Budget. The housing market is cooling and consumer credit is likely to follow suit over coming months as the economy continues to contract.

M4 is the Bank of England's main broad measure of money supply. There is no target for M4 and in practice the central bank tends to follow an adjusted measure that excludes intermediate other financial corporations in order to get a handle on current underlying trends. The M4 private sector lending counterpart is the most closely watched aspect of the report.

M4 is similar to the M3 measure used in some other countries. M4 includes everything in M2 (also called the retail component of M4) plus other deposits with an original maturity of up to five years; other claims on financial institutions such as repos and bank acceptances; debt instruments issued by financial institutions including commercial paper and bonds with a maturity of up to five years. Understanding the role of money in the economy has always been an important issue for policymakers. And the pickup in broad money growth and decline in credit spreads over the past three years together with more recent financial market turbulence has made it a particularly pertinent issue. Monetary data can potentially provide important corroborative or incremental information about the outlook for inflation. Quantitative easing is essentially a policy aimed at boosting money supply.