The Committee voted unanimously to maintain the stock of purchased assets financed by the issuance of central bank reserves at £375 billion.
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“The jobs data is pretty important but I can’t see any data next week being enough to convince the market from their current thinking, i.e. that they’re not going to raise rates until the end of next year at the earliest”, he said.
“Though the likelihood of a tightening in policy by US policymakers is widely expected, the market reaction to any decision by the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates remains hard to predict”, according to the minutes.
Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, last week announced a cut to overnight deposit rates from minus 0.2 per cent to minus 0.3 per cent and extended a 60 billion euro (£43bn) stimulus programme by six months.
The outlook for inflation reflects the balance between persistent drags from factors such as sterling and world export prices and prospective further increases in domestic cost growth.
The Bank said on Thursday that a softening of spending cuts planned by Chancellor Osborne could add 0.2 percentage points to growth next year.
BoE Governor Mark Carney and his colleagues have said they want to see more of a pick-up in British wages before they start to think about moving more quickly toward a rate hike.
Britain’s central bank surprised investors last month when it released a barrage of economic forecasts that suggested it might leave rates unchanged until early 2017, pushing down the value of sterling.
The bank said the scope of future monetary easing would depend on the inflationary impact of “movements on worldwide commodity and financial markets”.
Nick Dixon, investment director at Edinburgh-based life and pensions group Aegon UK, said: “Although MPC members who voted to hold rates had one eye on the US Fed’s decision next week, the MPC’s forward guidance indicate that rates will remain low for “some time”.
And with inflation remaining in negative territory – at minus 0.1 per cent in October – there is little rush for the MPC to pull the trigger on a rate rise.
Bank Rate has been held at 0.5% but the split within the Monetary Policy Committee was eight to one in favour of no move.
Minutes of December’s policy meeting show officials were concerned by an apparent slowdown in wage growth, as well as a further dip in oil prices.
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“Raising rates this year will, in my view, serve to reduce monetary policy uncertainty and to keep the economy on track for sustained growth with price stability”, Mr Harker was reported as saying.
