Market News

LONDON (Reuters) -Bank of England Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden said on Tuesday that Britain's jobs market had shown clear signs of weakening and that he was now more worried that inflation could fall below the central bank's forecasts.

"The latest PAYE data for payrolled employees, notwithstanding the potential for revisions, indicate that private sector employee numbers are now clearly in contractionary territory," Ramsden said in a speech to the Barclays CEPR Monetary Policy Forum.

Ramsden was one of three members of the nine-strong Monetary Policy Committee at the BoE who voted last week to cut interest rates to 4% from 4.25% while the majority instead backed no change in borrowing costs.

Ramsden said in his speech that his decision last week had been "finely balanced" but that even at 4%, borrowing costs would remain "clearly in restrictive territory" and it was important for the BoE to respond to the weaker outlook.

Earlier on Tuesday, fellow BoE interest rate-setter Megan Greene struck a different tone to Ramsden, saying she was worried that a recent rise in inflation in Britain might last longer than previously expected.

(Reporting by David Milliken and Andy Bruce; Writing by William Schomberg; editing by Suban Abdulla)