At a press conference, he said he stuck to his personal view that the decision about when to start raising rates from 0.5 per cent now was likely to come into sharper relief at the turn of the year. BOE officials voted 8-1 to hold rates steady.

Robert Gardener, Co-Chief Executive of Redington emphasises that even a rate hike is no panacea for UK pension funds: “Given the rock-bottom rate environment the pensions industry has endured since the financial crisis, many see a rate rise as a manna from heaven, but the reality is far more complex”.

“Were bank rate to follow the gently rising path implied by market yields, the committee judges that demand growth would be sufficient to return inflation to the target within two years”, the MPC minutes added.

“A rate rise is not panacea to the deep and complex problems faced by many defined benefits pension schemes”.

The health of the labour market, where wage growth has picked up in recent months, while hiring appears to have slowed, is the key uncertainty underlying the Bank’s projections, which the MPC stressed are “an expectation, not a promise”.

Matthew Ryan, strategy analyst at Ebury, said: “A Bank of England rate hike in 2015 would provide strong support for sterling back towards the 1.60 level against the US dollar, and 1.50 versus the euro by year-end”.

Sterling fell sharply on Thursday after just one Bank of England policymaker voted for higher interest rates at a meeting where the bank warned the strong currency and weak energy prices would keep inflation subdued well into next year.

The consumer prices index, the Government’s preferred measure of inflation, is already zero – helping relieved the pressure on family finances.

“The governor’s remarks about inflation shooting through the target in two years’ time imply that rates could rise ahead of current market expectations”.

The Bank forecasts that inflation will hover around zero for the next few months, with the potential for again turning negative as it did briefly earlier this year. Most economists taking part in a Reuters poll had expected two or even three members of the monetary policy vommittee to vote for a rise.

The bank also said the “near-term” outlook for inflation was “muted”.

There remains a wide range of forecasts on exactly when the Bank of England will raise rates.

The minutes of the MPC meeting state: “All Committee members agreed that the central message of the February 2014 Inflation Report guidance remained relevant: given the likely persistence of headwinds weighing on the economy, when Bank Rate did begin to rise, it was expected to do so more gradually than in previous cycles”. However, losses in the sterling were kept in check after BoE Governor Mark Carney said that although the rate hike timing could not be predicted, the time for it was indeed inching closer. We’ll get German industrial production and trade data, French industrial and manufacturing production and trade data, and the European session will finish with the UK’s trade balance.

In fact, a recent blog by Bank of England economists found that US swap rates – another barometer of bank funding – were responsible for a major chunk of the moves in UK mortgage rates.