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At 12:15 BST, the index was 0.4 per cent higher on 5,106.38 points, due largely to strength in the mining and banking sectors, Reuters reports.
Standard Chartered, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland were all up by as much as 2.6 per cent, while mining firms Rio Tinto, Fresnillo and Eurasian Natural Resources also climbed.
BP's stock was down 4.7 per cent as investors expressed fears regarding the cost of the clean-up operation currently underway in the Gulf of Mexico, however this represented a partial recovery from earlier in the day, when it had seen double-digit falls.
The Bank of England announced at 12:00 BST that it is keeping both interest rates and the quantitative easing programme unchanged at 0.5 per cent and £200 billion respectively.
It has held the base rate at the record low since reducing it by 0.5 percentage points in March 2009.
Posted by Greg Secker
