UK Interest Rate Hike: BoE Exec Calls for Increase Despite Slowing Economic Recovery

One of the Bank of England's most prominent members is calling for a hike in UK interest rates despite Britain displaying slower economic growth and weak wage increases.

In a column for The Sunday Times, the Monetary Policy Committee's Ian McCafferty, who is part of the nine-strong panel that votes on interest rate increases, has already piped for an increase since August.

"Starting to raise Bank rate now makes it more likely that the increase required over coming years to deliver our inflation target can be kept gradual and limited," he said in his column.

"Ensuring that we act in good time and move rates slowly, to allow consumers and businesses to adapt with minimum disruption, is, I believe, the best way of supporting and sustaining the economic expansion now under way."

The BoE has kept UK interest rates at a record low of 0.5% since 2009.

Recently, economist consensus has swayed from the BoE raising rates in the first half of 2015 to during the middle of next year, after economic growth slowed and Britons' wage increases were weak and well below the rate of inflation.

The Office for National Statistics showed that UK economic growth slowed in the three months to September, with the economy expanding by 0.7%.

It also showed that average weekly earnings grew by 0.9% in the year to August 2014.

The figures mean that average total pay (including bonuses) for employees in UK was £479 ($762, €601) per week before tax and other deductions from pay.

This month, the benchmark EY Item Club report said a hike in UK interest rates is unlikely to happen in the first quarter of 2015 as Britain's economy is set to only expand by 2.4% next year, which is significantly below the 3.1% growth expected in 2014.

The BoE governor, deputy governor and other members have explicitly said that the Bank is unlikely to boost rates in early 2015 due to economic data in the UK being weak.