THE deputy governor of the Bank of England warned yesterday that the recovery from the downturn was likely be the slowest on record.

Speaking during a visit to the North East, Charles Bean said the Bank broadly agreed with the bleak outlook for the economy published by the Office of Budget Responsibility with the Autumn Statement on Tuesday.

And he said the Bank would consider a further round of Quantitative Easing (QE) – it has so far injected some £275bn into the economy in the last two and a half years – if it was deemed necessary.

“All of the evidence suggests that recoveries from downturns associated with banking crises are slower and more drawn out than recoveries from ‘normal’ recessions,” said Bean.

“This certainly illustrates that. This is likely to show the longest time to recover back to the previous peak level of output of any downturn on record; some time in the middle of 2013 would be our central expectation.”

Bean admitted that a combination of higher than expected oil prices and the turmoil in the eurozone had led the Bank and most commentators to previously underestimate the scale of the troubles facing the economy.

And he warned that the problems in the eurozone were already being felt in the UK, with evidence that some exporters had seen a softening in demand from customers in Europe.