potential costs of injecting further monetary stimulus at the current time," the minutes said. David Miles was the only member to call for more QE, but he lowered his request from 50bn to 25bn to reflect the Treasury's decision to grab QE's 37bn cash surplus earlier this month. The transfer "would imply a small easing in monetary conditions", the minutes said. The 37bn will be released over 15 months, rather than two months it would take if the Bank had done the stimulus itself. The scale of the vote against QE came as a surprise given that little more than a month ago, most economists had predicted that the Bank would restart the programme. The Bank left the door open to QE in the future, should conditions deteriorate. "A case could be made for a further easing in monetary conditions. There was some excess capacity in the economy, and it was possible that output could be expanded without generating material additional inflationary pressure," the minutes said.