Broad money growth was again weak in April. A flat monthly performance means that M4 has expanded only once since last October and reduced annual growth from 0.4 percent to 0.3 percent, matching its weakest rate since October 2015. Excluding intermediate other financial corporations, the picture was a little brighter but a 0.3 percent monthly rise still only put yearly growth at a subdued 1.6 percent.

M4 lending fell a monthly 0.2 percent, its fourth straight decline, and was only flat excluding intermediate other financial corporations. Indeed, at a quarterly rate, the adjusted measure contracted fully 3.4 percent. Elsewhere, mortgage approvals declined from 51,488 to 48,690 and home lending contracted £1.38 billion having been flat in March. Overall consumer credit (£1.586 billion after £1.615 billion) was little changed.

Overall, the April data are again soft and suggest that the more interest rate sensitive sectors of the economy are responding to BoE tightening. Even so, the MPC still seems likely to raise Bank Rate again later this month.

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.