The rate cut means no high street bank now pays savers more than £1 interest a year on every £10,000 they have in an easy access savings account.

Savers can find better interest rates from different types of accounts, as well as challenger banks, building societies and NS&I.

The move came as Barclays announced its results for H1 2020.

The bank booked a profit before tax of £1.27bn in the first half of the financial year – down from £3bn in the same period in 2019.

Barclays first half results show it has granted more than 600,000 payment holidays under its support for consumers and businesses during the coronavirus crisis.

These included payment breaks for about 121,000 UK mortgages, 157,000 UK credit cards, 106,000 UK personal loans, and 216,000 US credit cards.

Barclays also provided about £22bn in coronavirus support for UK businesses, including enabling about £7.7bn of government backed Bounce Back Loans, and lending £2.5bn under the CBILS programmes.

Barclays took a £2.1bn impairment in the first quarter of the year due to coronavirus, followed by a £1.6bn impairment in Q2, totalling £3.7bn for the first half of 2020.

The credit impairment charges and loan loss provisions came in about £200m above analysts’ expectations.

Barclays’ H1 2020 results also revealed that 70,000 of the bank’s 88,000-strong workforce have been working from home during the pandemic.

Jes Staley, Barclays chief executive, said: “This has been a period focussed on supporting our customers, clients and the UK economy through the Covid-19 pandemic – providing the people and businesses that we serve with a bridge to recovery in every way we can.

“Since late March, we have helped to deliver around £22bn of vitally important Covid-19 government support measures to UK businesses to help fund them, including c.250k government backed Bounce Back Loans totalling c.£7.7bn, c.£2.5bn under the CBILS programmes and c.£11.7bn of commercial paper issuance.

“To help consumers with their short-term household finances more than 600k payment holidays have been provided along with other fee waivers and support measures. We have also already distributed £45m of our £100m Community Aid Package to Covid-19 related charities in the UK, US and India to help rebuild communities.”

Barclays’ investment bank income rose 31% over the six months to £6.9bn – led by its markets business. However, the bank confirmed there would be no interim dividend for shareholders.