less affordable, a problem exacerbated by QE, without which house prices would have fallen by 22%, according to the BoE's own analysis. A rise in unsecured household debt added to questions over the sustainability of the economic recovery in 2016. The BoE insisted there was no cause for alarm, despite having said two years earlier that the recovery was "neither balanced nor sustainable". Following the UK's 2016 decision to leave the European Union, the BoE cut interest rates to a new historic low of 0.25% for just over a year. It also increased the amount of QE since the start of the Great Recession to £435bn. By Q4 2018 net borrowing in the UK was the highest in the OECD at 5% of GDP. Households had been in deficit for an unprecedented nine quarters in a row. Since the Great Recession, the country was no longer making a profit on its foreign investments. 2020 to present In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a temporary ban was imposed on non-essential business and travel in the UK. The BoE cut the interest rate to 0.1%. Economic growth had been weak before the crisis, with zero growth in Q4 2019. By May, 23% of the British workforce was furloughed (temporarily laid off). Government schemes were launched to help affected workers. In the first half of 2020, GDP shrank by 22.6%, the deepest recession in UK history and worse than any other G7 or European country. During 2020 the BoE purchased £450 billion of government bonds, taking the amount of quantitative easing since the start of the Great Recession to £895 billion. Overall, GDP shrank by 9.9% in 2020, making it the worst contraction since the Great Frost paralysed the economy in 1709. In 2021 consumer price inflation (CPI) began rising sharply due to higher energy and transport costs. With annual inflation approaching 11%, the BoE gradually increased the base rate to 2.25% during the first nine months of 2022. The UK was not alone: global inflation rates were the highest in 40 years owing to the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, though , the country had the highest domestic electricity prices and amongst the highest gas prices in Europe, contributing to a cost of living crisis. In February 2022 the BoE began quantitative tightening (a reversal of QE) by not renewing mature government bonds and in November started offloading