It should come as little surprise that banks are dragging their heels about passing on the base rate cut on to their mortgage customers. (Incidentally, there was no such soul-searching when it came to passing on each of the past five base rate rises.)

About half of lenders have still not announced whether their customers will benefit from the quarter-point reduction.

The Bank of England may have voted for monetary easing in an effort to help to ease the crisis in the credit markets, but it has had little effect. Banks are still struggling to get funding from the money markets, and what they are getting is costing them dear.

To protect their margins, it makes sense for them either not to pass on the full rate cut to borrowers, or to recoup the cash elsewhere.

Usually, savers would pay the price, receiving less generous returns. But there is a problem here, too. Banks need to attract savers to shore up their deposits — which are a much less costly form of finance than the money markets.

So banks must weigh up which customers will bear the burden of their own borrowing costs.

Delaying any decision is in itself a profitable tactic.

But some lenders are just not prepared to incur the wrath of their borrowers.

Halifax, Nationwide and HSBC have bitten the bullet and announced that they will pass on the full base rate cut.

Whether their number will swell when, as expected, the base rate falls again in the next couple of months is a moot point.

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