Money printing gave us £300bn more to spend, claims Bank boss

THE Bank of England’s controversial money printing programme has helped shore up the British economy, its chief economist declared last night.

Andy Haldane, a key lieutenant of Governor Mark Carney, insisted so-called quantitative easing had lowered borrowing costs, pushed up share prices and would boost spending by families across the country by £300bn.

He also said printing money has driven the pound lower – helping British companies export their goods around the world. ‘What has QE done for us?’ Mr Haldane said. ‘The answer is quite a lot in boosting spending relative to what it would have been if these interventions had not taken place.’

He claimed that QE would boost spending by £300bn over its lifetime and added: ‘That’s not nothing. So when people ask what has QE done for us, the answer is quite a lot.’

His comments came after former foreign secretary William Hague this week said central banks had ‘lost the plot’ and warned that unless they raised interest rates soon ‘the era of their much-vaunted independence will come, possibly quite dramatically, to its end’.

The Bank cut interest rates from 0.5pc to a new low of 0.25pc in August following the vote to leave the European Union, clobbering savers who have lost out since the financial crisis.

It also unleashed another round of money printing – promising to pump another £170bn of emergency cash into the economy.