26 January 2004, 12:29  UK's Brown backs BoE, says spending to slow

LONDON, Jan 26 - Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown on Monday pledged support for any "difficult decisions" the Bank of England might have to take and warned government departments spending would have to slow. In a speech to a conference on enterprise, Brown said: "We will continue to steer a course of stability and support our monetary authorities in the difficult decisions they have to take. And we will entrench, not relax our fiscal discipline."
The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee is widely expected to raise interest rates again next month in response to an acceleration in the pace of economic growth. Brown repeated that the government would continue to meet its self-imposed fiscal rules in spite of a growing public deficit. But departments could not expect the largesse of recent years to continue. "While meeting all our commitments and our fiscal rules, the rate of spending growth in the next spending round will be lower than in this round.//

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