Bank of England: 'no immediate need' to raise rates Many economists now think 7pc unemployment could be reached in the next few months - and the BoE's Monetary Policy Committee were keen to stress that if this happens, they did not intend to raise interest rates straight away. Expectations of an interest rate rise in the spring of next year had already caused monetary conditions to tighten, as had the strengthening of sterling in recent months, the Bank said. Inflation has fallen faster than expected in recent months, and in December it hit its 2pc target for the first time in more than four years. "Members therefore saw no immediate need to raise Bank Rate even if the 7pc unemployment threshold were to be reached in the near future," the minutes said. Moreover, it was likely that the headwinds to growth ... would persist for some time yet, and that inflationary pressures would remain contained. Consequently when the time did come to raise Bank Rate, it would be appropriate to do so only gradually. While the fall in unemployment suggested there was less slack in the economy than thought, there was still a significant amount of spare capacity and looking purely at a headline unemployment rate could be misleading, the BoE said. The BoE added that there were upside risks to its forecast that Britain's economy would grow by just under 1pc a quarter in the last three months of 2013 and the first three months of 2014. On Tuesday the International Monetary Fund raised its forecast for 2014 growth to 2.4pc from 1.9pc, the biggest upward revision for any advanced economy. The BoE forecast 2.8pc growth in November.