The banks’ drive to restore their profitability, combined with the lack of sufficient new competition, has meant that, far from lowering their standard variable rates over the past three years as ECB rates have fallen, they have (as is well known) actually increased the standard variable rates somewhat.
The trends are shown in the attached figure which is based on a simple bank-by-bank average of the advertised standard variable rates for an 80 per cent loan-to-value mortgage.