Broad money expanded just 0.1 percent on the month in April after an unrevised 0.7 percent increase in March. M4 has now grown in four of the last five months and, at 5.6 percent, the annualised quarterly rate is the highest since the period ending October 2022. M4 lending was also up a monthly 0.1 percent which, following a 0.9 percent bounce previously, similarly leaves a solid upward trend.

Excluding intermediate other financial institutions, M4 rose a stronger 0.4 percent versus March but its lending counterpart only rose 0.1 percent, leaving a subdued minus 0.6 percent 3-month annualised rate. That said, the latter post was the strongest since January.

Elsewhere the financial data were again mixed. In the housing market, mortgage approvals slipped from 61,263 to a still firm 61,140 while mortgage lending jumped from £0.46 billion to £2.41 billion. However, overall consumer credit rose just £0.73 billion or around half the £1.42 billion seen March.

In sum, today's data remain consistent with a gradual recovery in economic activity and should have no significant implications for how the BoE MPC meeting votes in June.

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.