King says "in the light of very weak outturns for business investment last year...we thought there would be a weaker outlook for investment than we had thought in November.

Bean says MPC fairly close "to middle of pack" of independent forecasters with its own growth forecasts. King says his change of view was a change of view about the state of the economy. "That is not to say it was an easy one to reach."

"I am certainly quite prepared to vote in the minority," said King, adding George was of the same view. George says it difficult to put numbers to the so-called "output gap". Says 2.75 percent growth is "not an unreasonable assumption" for Treasury to make of the economy's "trend" rate of growth over past 10 years.

Charlie Bean says the economy is "close to but a little bit below potential. So a small output gap".

George says it difficult to know what impact interest rate changes have on the exchange rate.

"Unfortunately that link is not at all straight forward, certainly not in the short run. It's very difficult to know very often whether moving an interest rate in one direction or another we will put upward or downward pressure on the exchange rate....I would not have an expectation."

George says UK has lowest unemployment rate in G7 and about the strongest growth over the past few years so it is "no surprise that our rates are higher than other countries at this juncture".

"The exaggeration and sensationalisation in some of the media will actually impact on confidence in an environment where confidence is extremely important."

Barker says she voted for a cut because of early signs of weakness in the household sector.

Paul Tucker, who voted against this month's rate cut, says there are good reasons to think households can sustain higher levels of debt than in the past but says the pace of growth of indebtedness had been unsustainable and needed to slow. "I thought it was better to wait and see if household consumption growth to slow as it needs to do for the economy to come back into balance.

"It was surprising that the market reaction was so strong. I think the market had begun to drift in the direction of expecting a cut so I think the long-term consequences for markets will be almost zero."

King says his vote for a cut was based entirely on the outlook for inflation.

"I didn't find it a very easy decision, but i based it entirely on the outlook for inflation." "I think one thing that came out of our forecast round was a pretty clear view that looking two years (ahead) and especially beyond the two year horizon once the short run impetus of higher oil prices and particularly house prices had worn off, which we expected them to do, that inflation would actually be headed down."

"And so with pre-emptive reasons the need to take action to avoid a future shortfall of inflation below the target, it was necessary to lower interest rates.

"I didn't find it an entirely easy decision, but it was easy to know what the reasons were...and they were entirely focused on the inflation outlook."

George says main reason behind recent rate cut was weakness in international economy, particularly the euro zone, and uncertainty related to a potential war with Iraq.