British pension funds want the Bank of England to keep buying bonds beyond this week

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has said officials would suspend quantitative tightening in times of market turmoil and a very clear timetable of sales would be made transparent.

The Bank of England may be forced to push back a long-awaited plan to start selling bonds this month after a fresh bout of market panic.

The central bank has already postponed a so-called active quantitative tightening programme to the end of the month and has had to start buying debt to prop up the market. Many investors and analysts are now betting bond sales will be delayed even longer.