Bank of England Chief Economist Huw Pill has criticised calls for the central bank to “wait and see” how the Iran war pans out before changing policy, Reuters reports.

Pill said a wait-and-see approach could be confused as looking neutral on the threat of higher inflation, even if holding interest rates represents a tightening of policy against previous assumptions of interest rate cuts.

“If you’re waiting and seeing and you don’t see, then you’ve just waited,” Pill told a roundtable event hosted by Barclays.

“And I’m not sure waiting is necessarily the appropriate response to the sort of inflationary dynamics which have the potential, at least, to have some self-sustaining momentum.”