LONDON - Bank of England policymaker Catherine Mann said on Tuesday she voted for a half-point interest rate cut last week to "cut through the noise" about the right stance for policy, but said rates needed to remain restrictive.

"Structural impediments to achieving the (inflation) target on a sustained basis are not yet fully purged. The activist policymaker needs to maintain policy rate discipline and restrictiveness even after this immediate decision," she said in a lecture at Leeds Beckett University in northern England.

"I chose 50 basis points now, along with continued restrictiveness in the future, and a higher long-term Bank Rate to 'cut through the noise'," she added, saying she rejected the gradualist approach preferred by most policymakers.

Mann was one of two members of the BoE's Monetary Policy Committee who last week voted for a half-point cut in interest rates to 4.25%, against the majority who favoured a quarter-point cut to 4.25%.

Mann's vote came as a big surprise to investors, as she was previously the most hawkish member of the MPC - though she had also said that at some point her "activist" stance would require a switch to a faster pace of rate cuts at the appropriate time.

Mann said she judged the long-term equilibrium interest rate for Britain was at the higher end of a 3-3.5% range.

Last week the BoE halved its growth forecast for 2025 to 0.75% but also forecast inflation would rise from 2.5% in December 2024 to around 3.7% by the third quarter of this year.

Mann said her commitment to continued 'restrictiveness' in interest rates "ensures that, as we move through the inflation hump, (inflation) expectations remain anchored both in the near and longer term".

She also said businesses' pricing behaviour appeared to be returning to its pre-COVID pattern and that soft consumer demand - partly because of a deteriorating labour market - was likely to limit businesses' ability to pass on higher costs. 

"The risk of embedded inflationary behaviours has diminished sufficiently to warrant a reduction in monetary policy restrictiveness," she said.

(Reporting by David Milliken Editing by William Schomberg and Andy Bruce)