Five pound notesThe Bank of England resisted pumping more cash into the struggling UK economy by the narrowest of margins earlier this month, it has emerged.

Governor Sir Mervyn King was among four members of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to call for an extension of the UK's quantitative easing scheme but they were outvoted by the five other members.

The minutes of the meeting two weeks ago, published on Wednesday, reinforced expectations in the City that the Bank will sanction a further £50 billion of asset purchases on July 5, taking the QE programme to £375 billion.

Members discussed cutting interest rates below the current record low of 0.5% but decided that an expansion of QE would be more effective.

Those who voted for no change in the QE programme did so because they wanted to see how the eurozone crisis unfolded and to check that inflation would fall as expected.

The latest figure on CPI inflation was published by the Office for National Statistics on Tuesday and showed a bigger than expected drop to 2.8%.

Richard Driver, a currency analyst at Caxton FX, said the minutes signalled a major shift in the stance of the MPC.

He added: "With eurozone risks intensifying, inflation having unexpectedly eased and the MPC clearly very concerned with the UK's ability to bounce back out of this double-dip recession, we are now fully expecting the pro-QE camp to have gained a majority by July's meeting."