BoE's Fisher warns 'significant chance' of UK double dip

MPC member Paul Fisher has warned the UK is at risk of another recession, less than two years since the last downturn.

Fisher, executive director for markets at the Bank of England, warned with growth slowing at the tail end of the year, the UK could "quite easily" see two quarters of negative growth.

"I think it is a significant chance," he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

"Looking at Q4 for example, at best it seems likely to be flat, and could easily have negative growth, so the technical outcome of two quarters of negative growth in a row could quite easily come about."

Fisher's warning echoes fellow policymaker Adam Posen, who had been calling for more quantitative easing for the past year. Posen said earlier this week UK economic growth is "cratering".

Since the UK emerged from recession in 2009, GDP growth has been volatile. Recently it has slowed dramatically, falling from 0.4% in Q1 of this year to 0.1% in Q2.

Fisher said the action taken by the MPC to inject £75bn more of QE into the market should help tackle the slowdown.

"When you are in a recovery from the sort of recession and financial crisis we have seen, we know from historical experience it is always going to be a very long, slow and bumpy process.

"When you hit one of those bumps, as we are now, you are never quite sure if it is just a bump and the economy is going to come back, or whether the economy will slide back approaching a recession, which is always possible with this sort of financial crisis overhanging."