Bank of England policymaker Adam Posen has said he does not expect current general inflation trends to continue beyond a few years.

Mr Posen, saying he was expressing his personal views, was speaking at a conference at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, an institute established and financed by the Indian central bank.

Asked if inflation in general would remain high for a long time, he replied "I don't think that's what's going to happen... It may happen for a few years ... but I think it is fundamentally uneconomic to believe that markets do not adjust, economies do not adjust."

He also said he was not worried about inflation in the UK, partly because wage growth was "going to be very low for the next couple of years".

UK inflation is running at double the BoE's 2 per cent target and is set to quicken further. This has put pressure on the central bank to raise rates, which it has kept at a record low of 0.5 per cent since March 2009.

Mr Posen has opposed raising rates, maintaining that the BoE should not allow fears of higher inflation expectations to force it into an increase.

In his view, people calling for increases now overestimated the impact of rises in short-term inflation expectations on British wages.

At a meeting on February 9-10th, the nine-member Monetary Policy Committee voted 6-3 to keep rates unchanged. At its previous meeting, the vote for leaving rates alone was 7-2. Minutes of the latest meeting, released on Wednesday, showed that BoE chief economist Spencer Dale changed his view and endorsed increasing rates.

Asked in Mumbai if he had changed his view on quantitative easing, Mr Posen said "As of the minutes released last week I voted for further quantitative easing."

Previously, he has called for a £50 billion expansion to the BoE's programme of quantitative easing to £250 billion.

Reuters