David Walton was alone at the latest meeting of the Bank of England's interest-setting committee in voting for a second month to raise its official interest rate.

Minutes of the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee on June 7 and 8 show that the other seven members all voted to hold the rate at 4.5 per cent where it has been since last August. Mr Walton sought an immediate quarter-point increase.

The majority in favour of no change included the committee's latest recruit, the American academic economist David Blachflower. He replaced Stephen Nickell , who had voted six months running for a quarter-point cut in the rate.

The outcome confirmed the widespread view in the city that the Bank is likely to leave interest rates alone for the rest of this summer, although money market futures point to a quarter-point increase by the end of this year to be followed by another some time in 2007.

The Bank's committee still has only eight members instead of its normal complement of nine because Chancellor Gordon Brown has not yet named a replacement for Richard Lambert, the former Financial Times editor who left in April to replace Sir Digby Jones as director general of the CBI.

In the event of an evenly split vote, the decision would effectively fall to Mervyn King, the Bank's governor in his role as the committee's chairman.

The minutes reveal that much of the debate at the month's meeting hinged on the implications of the sharp falls in share prices round the world since the second week of May and the rise in the value of the pound that followed.

By holding down personal wealth and import prices, these should tend to damp down inflationary pressures.

But the committee noted that the recent fall in equity and commodity prices were not large when set against the increases during the previous 12 months.

As to sterling, it was still within the range it had occupied in recent years.

The outcome would depend on whether companies and households change their spending decisions in response to the fall in share prices. If they don't the committee expects the impact on inflation to be modest, the minutes recorded.

They continued: "There was a risk, however, of a more prolonged and pronounced correction of financial asset prices that might have a significant impact on growth and inflation in the United Kingdom and its major trading partners."

Against that, the inflation in prices paid by producers for their supplies and those of imports generally were high by recent historical standards.

The general public's inflation expectations had picked up since the end of last year, probably due to the rise in gas and electricity prices.

Despite that, inflation measured by the consumer prices index remained close to the Bank's two per cent target.

There were no signs of wage pressures increasing. This might reflect continued inflows of migrant workers and the larger number of people in work or seeking work.

The seven-strong majority on the committee took the view that recent developments left the outlook for inflation broadly in line with the Bank's central projections in its May Inflation Report, so the official rate should stay unchanged.

They accepted, though, that there were "significant risks" of inflation either overshooting or under-shooting the target - and Mr Walton concluded that the upside risk was strong enough to warrant an immediate increase in rates.

The committee noted that while growth in the gross domestic product and house-hold consumption had been slightly disappointing in the first quarter of this year, things appeared to have improved in the second three months.