The number of lenders who have announced plans to pass on last week's interest rate cut to their variable rate mortgage customers remained in single digits today.

Just nine lenders have so far said they will be reducing their standard variable rate (SVR), including only five of the 10 biggest groups.

Instead the majority of the more than 90 lenders who have an SVR continued to sit on their hands, saying their rates remained "under review".

Among those who have not yet announced how much of Thursday's 0.5% base rate reduction they will be passing on are the nationalised banks Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley.

Louise Cuming, head of mortgages at moneysupermarket.com, said: "The fact that we have seen so few lenders say what they are going to do shows the very difficult position they are in.

"Lenders are between a rock and a hard place. We need them to be financially sound and profitable, but they are being pilloried if they don't pass on the full rate reduction. For many the sums just don't add up.

"The issue is no longer the availability of cheap money, money is now cheap enough. The issue is now the availability of funds."

She added that many lenders were likely to wait until February to see if there was a further interest rate cut, and then announce reductions for both cuts in one go.

Among those lenders which have announced a reduction, all but two are passing on the full 0.5%.

HSBC, Lloyds TSB, which also lends under the Cheltenham & Gloucester brand, and Nationwide are all reducing their SVR by this amount, while Halifax and Royal Bank of Scotland/NatWest are passing on 0.25% of the cut.

Meanwhile, the number of mortgages available for people with only small deposits has continued to fall.

There are now only three providers offering loans that will advance up to 95% of a property's value, namely Abbey, Yorkshire Bank and Clydesdale, while there are 138 different deals for people with a 10% deposit.

But homeowners will pay for the privilege of borrowing a high proportion of their property's value, with Abbey offering a five-year fixed rate deal of 7.09%.

Meanwhile pressure is mounting on the Government to announce a new initiative to get banks lending again.

Many members of the mortgage and housing industry are calling on it to implement the proposals put forward by former Halifax Bank of Scotland head Sir James Crosby, namely to guarantee new residential mortgage backed securities.

On Sunday the heads of the leading banks had lunch with the Prime Minister and Chancellor at Chequers, and Gordon Brown told a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party last night that further action in relation to banks and small businesses was imminent.