BoE can't tackle surging UK house prices directly - official

LONDON, June 6 (Reuters) - The Bank of England will examinerisks from rising house prices but cannot tackle the issue ofsurging prices directly, a senior BoE official said on Friday.

The Bank's Financial Policy Committee, a watchdog thatmonitors threat to the financial system's stability, meets onJune 17. It faces pressure from some lawmakers to rein insurging house prices in parts of the country, in particularLondon.

"It's the risk from the rise from housing that we arefocused on, as opposed to house prices themselves," Paul Fisher,deputy head of the BoE's Prudential Regulation Authority, toldreporters on the sidelines of a banking conference.

"House prices may go up or down for good reasons. Thequestion for us is are households going over-indebted, are banksover-stretching themselves too much. That's the risk which wewill be trying to address," Fisher said. (Reporting by Huw Jones, editing by Marc Jones)