David Walton, a member of the Bank of England’s rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee, unexpectedly died yesterday after a short illness.

"All our thoughts are with David's wife, his young children and his parents,'' Mervyn King, the Bank of England Governor, said in a statement.

"David inspired the respect and affection of all his colleagues in the bank and today's news has come as a shock to us all, as it will to those who knew him in the City, where he made his reputation as an economist."

Mr Walton, 43, started his career working as an economist at the Treasury from 1984 to 1986. He joined Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, in 1987 where he became Chief European Economist.

He became a policy maker on the Bank of England's rate-setting committee in June 2005.

Mr Walton cast the first vote in a year for an interest-rate increase at the bank's May meeting, which he repeated in June. The Bank's seven other policy-makers voted to keep rates at 4.5 per cent.

Mr Walton’s death leaves the MPC short of two members as Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is yet to appoint a successor to Richard Lambert, who left the MPC earlier this year to become director-general of the CBI.

David Walton: Obituary

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