THE defection of Charles Goodhart from the hawks to the doves on the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee last month has taken some of the heat out of the debate about UK interest rates, but Mervyn King, its chief economist and one of the hawks, made it clear yesterday that he still harboured doubts about achieving the inflation target.

The committee meets on Wednesday and Thursday of next week and by that time King will have been elevated to deputy governor and Oxford academic John Vickers will have joined the Bank as chief economist.

The expansion of the committee to nine means that the Governor, Eddie George, will no longer have to exercise his casting vote in tight decisions.

King told the conference of the Building Societies' Association there was a risk that consumption might prove stubbornly buoyant. Hopes that rates had peaked were boosted last week with a sharp slowdown in retail sales growth last month.

''Real disposable income increased by 4.2% last year and the ratio of net financial wealth of households to their income reached an all-time high of over three,'' King said. ''Those factors will support consumption.

''The latest retail sales figures provide some comfort with volume growth below that in the middle of last year when consumption was stimulated by windfall gains, predominantly from the conversion of building societies.''

King also expressed concern that domestically-generated inflation was significantly higher than the underlying rate.

''As the one-off effects of the rise in sterling wear off over the course of the next year or so - as indeed they will unless sterling appreciates further - inflation will start to rise above the target unless domestically-generated inflation declines.

''The earnings figures released earlier this month - which showed that average earnings in the economy grew by 4.9% and in the private sector by no less than 5.6% - were undoubtedly disappointing.

''It is too soon to judge how far they reflect the impact of higher bonuses this year than last. In any event, to hit the inflation target those rates of earnings growth will have to fall back.''

In its May inflation report, the Bank's central projection was that the pace of output growth would slow, but King said that a slowdown in economic growth ''is not, in itself, sufficient to hit the inflation target.

''The central issue for monetary policy is whether total nominal demand will slow sufficiently quickly to prevent retail price inflation rising when the favourable effects of a high exchange rate and lower commodity prices wear off''.

King took the opportunity to object to the classification of the members of the monetary committee as hawks and doves. ''As the voting record shows, it is seriously misleading to think of the monetary policy committee in terms of fixed camps of hawks and doves.

''As circumstances change, it is easy to imagine that the hawks shall be doves and the doves shall be hawks. And, over a five-year period, since each member of the committee is trying to hit the same inflation target, I predict that it will be impossible to distinguish between doves and hawks.

''When policy is finely balanced, disagreements about the precise level of interest rate are not only likely but an indication that policy is broadly on track. That is why the motto of the monetary policy committee should perhaps be 'divided we stand, united we fall'.''

The Bank has developed its own measure of house price inflation using data from the Land Registry. This suggests that house prices increased by 9% last year, compared with 6.9% measured by the Halifax and 12.9% by the Nationwide.