Tracker mortgages follow the Interest Rate, and the companies, including Woolwich, Lloyds TSB and Northern Rock all decided to withdraw their own deals ahead of the expected interest rate cut today.

All three of these institutions were party-nationalised during the credit-crunch and have come under pressure from the government to begin passing on the cuts.

"We want banks and building societies to pass on interest rate cuts to mortgage holders." Said Gordon Brown.

Brown and the government also pointed to the drop in the Inter-Bank Lending Rate, or Libor. The rate has been slowly decreasing for the last couple of months but banks are still wary of passing on these savings for fear of being unable to service existing accounts.

The banks pointed out that while the Libor rate had fallen it was still way above the base-rate and that it would be difficult to offer cuts to consumers when they still had to borrow at relatively expensive rates themselves.