Six members of the Monetary Policy Committee voted to keep Bank Rate on hold at 4.25% per cent at last month’s meeting, with three preferring a cut of 25 basis points. Headline CPI inflation in May was 3.4%, in line with the Bank’s forecast at the time of the May MPC meeting, but 0.2 percentage points below our own forecast. We had been expecting some further pass-through from the April increase in employers’ NICs, but it seems that whatever pass-through