Andrew Bailey made the comments as he hailed Wednesday's inflation data - which revealed it remained at 4% in January - as "quite encouraging" amid the Bank's ongoing attempts to bring the rate down to its target of 2%.

"That's good news, as far as I can tell," he told the House of Lords economic affairs committee on Wednesday afternoon.

However, the governor added the figure did not fundamentally alter the Bank's outlook on potentially cutting interest rates in the months ahead.

"I think it leaves us broadly where we thought we were going to be. But that's obviously encouraging relative to where we could have been," Mr Bailey said.

The UK's central bank had forecast inflation would rise slightly to 4.1%, while economists polled by Reuters expected it to creep up to 4.2%.

The rate of inflation has been on a downward trend in recent months - except for a surprise rise in December.

The Bank has held interest rates at 5.25% four times in a row and Mr Bailey previously told Sky News that he expects its next move to be a cut. However, the Bank has yet to decide when this will be.

It comes ahead of new growth figures on Thursday morning - which could show that the UK has tipped into a recession, which is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) previously estimated that gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 0.1% in the three months from July to September.

Economists polled by Reuters believe Thursday's figures will show it again shrank by 0.1% in the fourth quarter.

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Mr Bailey told the committee it was "in the balance" whether the UK would enter a "technical recession" on Thursday.

"Last year, overall GDP was basically flat... It wouldn't take much to tip it either way, frankly," he added.

However, the governor expressed some optimism for the year ahead.

"Going forward, and I think this is in some ways more significant, we are now seeing some signs of the beginning of a pick-up in some of the surveys, for instance… we've got a modest pick-up this year which continues thereafter," he told the committee.