Well at least if you’ve a mortgage.

Despite joint pressure from Gordon Brown and the chancellor Alistair Darling to match the one percentage point reduction in the bank rate to 2%, both the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Halifax said their standard variable rates (SVR) would not be reduced by the full amount.

Halifax, Britain’s biggest mortgage lender, said it would trim only a quarter point off its SVR home loan although customers on tracker mortgages would receive the cut in full, worth £82 a month on a £150,000 mortgage. Source: The Guardian.

The RBS’s excuse was balancing “between the needs of borrowers and savers”, but would pass on the cut in full to business customers, whilst the excuse from the Halifax is even weaker “the commercial imperative of managing its business in a sustainable and prudent fashion”.

I reckon Gordon Brown should use the fact that after this summer’s fiasco the Government owns a majority stake in both operations to fire the incompetent fools running HBOS and RBS and appoint people who understand the banks wider responsibilities after their ownership change.