Motability cars - should they be UK made?

[Pandersmum]

Motability cars are currently in the news with suggestions VAT will be added. I realise they are a lifetime to some and a perk to others. They are a huge annual cost to the tax payer.

AIBU to think that all motability car choice should be limited to those manufactured in the UK? This would support British manufacturing worker jobs and increase UK business tax revenue whilst still providing cars for those who need them?

It’s too much like work to go through them!

Yes,I can remember the name that they were given. Don't think anyone would get away with saying it out loud nowadays though!

Literally just one would do

FWIW I’d give up DS’s Motability vehicle in a heartbeat if the disabilities he had could be swapped so he did not struggle.

As it is the car is a lifeline , it’s his only access with the outside world. It gets him to Colchester Zoo (his happy place) and back . At age 22 most young men are socialising, having relationships, working and generally enjoying life on their own. My son cannot do this, he can’t even get on a bus by himself.

The car is a link with the outside world,

Sounds about right. Much easier to spout stuff, but less willing to show any facts.

According to one of the broadsheets today, if the chancellor implements input VAT on Motability cars, it will increase the average cost of a lease by £6,500 plus. In other words, she’s cutting the benefits to those disabled people by at least £2,000 pa?

How many people on here could afford to pay that, given those also on UC start losing benefits, when they have over £6,000? I suspect the number of people who would be able to afford a car, could drop off a cliff? 1,700 are employed in Motability - many of them could lose their jobs. If the second hand car market loses all those well maintained, fairly low mileage cars, that will put up the price of the remaining second hand cars, due to the law of supply and demand.

It really is disgusting that the government targets some of the most disabled and impoverished people in society to fill its black hole in public finances - because the government is run by people with no business experience and don’t think through the ramifications of their stupid ideas?

Who would have thought increasing employers NI would mean redundancies, freezes in recruitment, more inflation and a crisis in the care sector, with fixed incomes and high staff costs? Anyone who runs a business, but not the chancellor!

Able bodied drivers pay for their own cars.

Cars for the disabled often need expensive modifications and need to be larger- do you not agree with supporting the disabled to be mobile?

That does not really answer the question though, as disabled people pay for their cars on Motability. So why should their choice be limited?

"Able bodied drivers pay for their own cars."

Able bodied drivers don't need to have the space for 3 carers to accompany them. They don't need space for the wheelchair. They don't need sliding doors so they can be got out of the car safely. They don't need a car that accommodates their specialist harness. They can choose any car.

@ChiseltipHave you not read any of the other comments in the thread?
Disabled people pay for their cars too. They use their mobility component of their PIP/DLA plus in many cases a lump sum advanced payment that comes from their own funds. If they didn't have a car on the scheme they'd still get the monthly payment from DWP.
How many times do people need to say "it's NOT a FREE car?"

Sadly I can see it being "reclaimed" in the name of free speech. There are clearly posters on this very thread who think it.

Huh. I must have imagined the hefty advanced payment I had to pay from my own money.

It really is disgusting that the government targets some of the most disabled and impoverished people in society to fill its black hole in public finances

Well that's the Reform manifesto people are fighting each other to be the first to sign up to.

I refer you to the picture I posted which is real history, not someones sick imagination. That is where we are headed.

It's still financed through the government scheme.

The point posters are making is, that people are given ££ as mobility component. They are obviously allowed to spend this however they want.

But considering the cost of new cars and the fact that the mobility component is financed by all taxpayers, I can see the issues. Some people may never be able to afford a new car, yet there are many ex notability cars available on the 2nd hand market that have not been converted.

So I do think with the current climate of dooming tax raises we should be allowed to question this.

However, there are also moral aspects towards the disabled population to be considered- as rightly for many it's a lifeline. But from a purely financial point of few....

Why don't you report them? She said near 0 anyway.

Actually, the point posters are making is that 99% of the time, there's an advance payment which isn't funded by the government and often costs thousands of pounds up front before you can get the car.

You don't just rock up and select any car of your choosing with only the mobility money going towards it which many people seem to think is how it works.

But you didn't pay for the entire car did you?

But 'able bodied' people (?!) or the not disabled, are in a better position to be able to work for these things. My son can't work at all and never will. I appreciate some people are on a low income and can't afford to run a car but if they aren't disabled, they are in a better position to improve their situation.

Motability evens out the playing field a bit.

It certainly wasn't free either.

Noone leasing a car pays for an entire car. Thats the point of a lease scheme. You pay a bit upfront, a bit each month and then give the car back and its sold on..

ITA with that, I just don’t want to say it in public, in case it upsets any survivors or their descendants on MN.

This is such a weird thing to say in the context of the ‘able bodied people pay for their own cars’.

People who lease their cars, also do not pay for the entire car, regardless of who they lease from.

@ChiseltipThey paid the leasing costs out of their money - their PIP/DLA which they are free to spend however they choose. The leasing payment for a Motability car is no different to the leasing payment on any other car that any member of the public can get from a dealership on a car of their much wider choice. The disabled person doesn't own the car, they hand it back at the end of 3 years or possibly 5 if specially adapted - and they start all over again with a new leasing deal/advanced payment.

You don’t seem to understand that the government have targeted the ordinary working people again and again and again and again and again to fill the hole if the massively growing benefits bill without them even glancing at the spending and addressing ways of minimising them.

to fill a hole the government
has to increase taxes, borrow more, increase growth or cut spending. It has done the first two to death - absolute death. It needs to look at the second two. It’s time for spending to be cut. There is no other way.