Bank Of England Committee Member: Growth Is Back

LONDON (AP) — Growth has resumed in Britain but the move toward recovery is still quite tentative, an economist on the Bank of England's nine-member interest rate-setting committee said Monday.

Andrew Sentance, a former chief economist with British Airways, said there was a large body of evidence that suggested growth had returned to the U.K., according to a summary of a speech released by the Bank of England.

Sentance was due to tell an audience at Royal Holloway University in southern England that "though we have seen a wide range of signs of recovery ... we are in the very early stages of a resumption of growth," according to the summary.

He warned of several challenges to the British economy, including a rise in energy and commodity prices once the global recovery is under way and Britain's ballooning public debt.

Sentance added that the country had yet to see the impact of the central bank's so-called quantative easing program — a system by which the government buys assets from banks to boost the money supply — on spending by companies and British households. Last month the central bank decided not to add anything to the 175 billion pounds ($290 billion) it had already devoted to the plan.

Sentance said the bank would eventually have to tighten the reins on the country's money supply, which would mean raising the country's interest rates above the rate of 0.5 percent, but added that there was considerable uncertainty as to when that would happen.