Britain's fragile recovery is set to pressure the Bank of England to leave its key interest rate at its record low level for a while longer, even if inflation is on course to keep rising, analysts said Wednesday.

The BoE on Wednesday said that two of its nine policymakers had earlier this month voted to hike its main rate to tame high British inflation.

The central bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted 7-2 to keep it at a record low level of 0.50 percent, minutes of the January meeting showed.

But the vote result revealed growing moves within the MPC to begin embarking on a policy of rate tightening.

Policymaker Andrew Sentance, who had previously been the only one to vote for a hike at recent meetings, was joined this time around by colleague Martin Weale. Both called for an increase in the rate to 0.75 percent.

"For two members, the evidence suggested that the balance of risks was already sufficiently clear to warrant an immediate increase in Bank Rate," the minutes said.

"The continued elevated rate of inflation, which was forecast to persist, posed a significant risk to inflation expectations and hence to the medium-term outlook for inflation.

"This made more powerful the case which had been building for some time for a gradual rise in Bank Rate," they added.

Analysts said that while the minutes showed growing pressure for a rate hike, events had been overtaken by official data published on Tuesday that showed Britain's economy suffered a surprise contraction in the fourth quarter of 2010.

"January's MPC minutes suggest that the committee was edging closer towards a near-term rate hike, but of course yesterday's weak GDP figures have altered the picture somewhat," said Vicky Redwood, an analyst at Capital Economics.

In a speech late Tuesday, Bank of England governor Mervyn King said the surprise slump in economic growth pointed to a "choppy" recovery.

Gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 0.5 percent in the three months to December, the first drop in economic output since the third quarter of 2009, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed.

Analysts were shocked at the news, which stoked fears that Britain could be heading for a fresh recession as deep spending cuts introduced by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition bite.

British finance minister George Osborne argued that the data was skewed by heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures last month.

However, the ONS said that growth would in any case have been flat in the fourth quarter, if the impact of the bad weather was removed.

King added in his speech that the current "period of uncomfortably high inflation", rather than the growth numbers, was a more immediate concern for the BoE.

He warned Britons to expect annual inflation to rise to between four percent and five percent in the coming months amid higher food and fuel prices.

Inflation stood at 3.7 percent in December, already way above the central bank's target of 2.0 percent.

Despite the inflation pressures, "the weakness of the GDP growth will have reduced significantly the odds of monetary policy tightening in the near future," said Slavena Nazarova, an economist at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank.

"We maintain our call for a rate hike not occurring before the fourth quarter of 2011," she added in a note to clients on Wednesday.

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