Today's other main news is that the Bank of England has decided against extending its quantitative easing.
The scheme whereby £200bn of asset purchases were introduced to add liquidity in the financial markets will be put on hold on the basis that the economy is coming out of recession.
The bank made the announcement at the same time that it held interest rates at 0.5 per cent.
The scheme,the purchasing of government bonds, or gilts, is widely lauded as being one of the reasons why the economy did not collapse into depression.But now that growth is occurring it could fuel inflationary pressures.
The danger is of course that with growth so weak,the move could simply push the economy back into recession.
As for interest rates,it is unlikely that there will be any upward movement until the fourth quarter of the year as the bank of England will want to see signs of convincing above-trend growth perhaps two successive quarters.
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