To think this is a fair change to the Motability scheme...

[BusyBumbling]

BBC News - 'Premium' cars like BMW and Mercedes cut from Motability scheme
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd9znkxq47xo

It's still supporting disabled people with the cost of owning a car whilst also supporting the British car industry. I think public opinion has been listened to on both sides and this seems very sensible.
It may also reduce some of the costs of the grants paid from the scheme which were helping fund the upfront cost for premium cars for poorer claimants.

"VAT on Motabiltiy is nil because of a special rule for the scheme. That's different from normal VAT rules where only substantially modified cars benefit. IPT is also nil for Motabiltiy cars, vs full rate for a disabled person buying normally.
These are worth several thousand pounds per car on top of the allowance."

A good explanation @GeneralPeter to those questioning how the scheme is subsidised by the taxpayer.

If they need the pip to get around...... And then they use the money for the car.... It's fair isn't it?

Like I don't know the extent of people's disability. I've not walked a mile in their shoes.

Nobody is saying the Motability scheme isn't a good idea. I'm just saying that these changes are sensible and fair to both disabled people and taxpayers. It's a balance, one that I think was slightly out of kilter.

Not charging tax on something isn’t the taxpayer “subsidising it”. Unless you believe everything in the country is Government property to begin with, of course.

Because it doesn’t save a single penny, The saving is £0. It’s all for show and keeping disabled people in their place.

That doesn’t mean the scheme is subsidised by the taxpayer!

The Mercedes v class being taken off the list is wrong. I know lots of people use this car as it’s easy to adapt compared to others. They need to not blanket ban brands and consider individual requirements.

@ninjahamster
Please tell me you aren’t serious about ending your life?
I know how horrible things are on so many ways but please that’s a turn of phrase

Yes, my stroke happened in the night, went to bed as usual, woke up disabled.

its been a fantastic year 🙇🏻‍♀️

I don't use the motability scheme because it's actually not that great a deal (IMO) but the glee that the choice of vehicles is being restricted is vile. So much nastiness.

maybe now that I'm disabled I should give away anything nice I own & beg for donations of old & broken things. I realise I'm no longer 'worthy' of nice things.

Please don't be serious. I'm so so sorry.

Ah sorry, I should not have posted about that, have requested deletion.

Goodness. I don’t think I need your approval for stating economic and fiscal facts, despite them being in very short supply on this thread.

As for your query about data, I spend much of my time reading economic reports so can’t remember where every statistic has come from but your claims here have been manifestly false as any glance at the data will show you.

I will attach some graphs for you. They show:

1. UK spending on “incapacity” / disablity is very low in comparison to OECD averages.
2. UK welfare spending in general is low in comparison to other European countries
3. Spending on working-aged welfare has remained relatively static with small fluctuations between 4% and 6% of GDP since 2000, and is currently around 5%
4. Of this, less than 1% has been spent on disability benefits and the same on incapacity benefits throughout and this remains the case. Note also that some fluctuations are due to changing benefit criteria moving people from one category to another so small and statistically insignificant changes are meaningless given the entire amount is under 1% in each category
5. Total incapacity benefits are around 0.9% of GDP, exactly the same as in 1978-9. They peaked at 1.3% of GDP in the mid-1990s
6. The incapacity benefit caseload is rising farely evenly across the population age cohorts, but increasing gradually as is to be expected in an ageing society with a failing health service that isn’t fit for purpose and following a pandemic which has caused many long-term health problems, as they always do
7. That said, the highest increase in claims by far has come from over 55s, from older women in particular. No doubt some of this driven by angry WASPIs furious that they couldn’t get their pensions early so deciding to be too ill to work instead.

Graphs to follow in separate posts due to attachment limits.

Sources are OBR, ONS, Parliamentary documents, DWP data and reports, economic analysts etc.

Some graphs

Please reach out for help.

Samaritans 126 123
NHS 111 and press 2 for mental health help
If you don't feel you can talk, text SHOUT to 85258
You can speak to CALM over WhatsApp or phone, 0800 58 58 58.

I know everything feels dark and endless right now but there are people who will listen.

Some more graphs…

Not true.

If an individual in receipt of PIP had to fund a car independently, they would be required to pay VAT on the vehicle and therefore revenues to HMRC would be increased.

So whilst the level of paid out benefit would be the same, the tax revenues received and therefore available to be spent on other things by the Government would be increased.

@ninjahamster
Please talk to me - I’ve taken the liberty of DM-ing you.
For the love of fuck don’t let the clowns on here with their fucking no sense about benefits and mental health get to you. I have a severely disabled DD and I get how low life can feel in that respect I also have (to a lesser extent now) PTSD and have certainly had self-harm and suicidal ideation at several points . Please at least talk to me.

I see. And how much does that add up to annually - the VAT on the non-adapted vehicles and only the additional top-up payment on the ones considered to be “luxury”?

An absolute triviality in terms of the national budget. It also seems to be the case per the existing tax law that any car (even non-adapted) would be exempt from VAT if bought by a disabled person because they require the specific functions that it has as standard (auto-defrost, auto-park, 360 cameras, paddle gear changes, auto-stop, or many other safety features) without needing the specific blanket VAT exemption for the Motability scheme to make their orivate purchase/ lease also VAT exempt, in just the same way that a walking stick purchase by an able-bodied hiker is not exempt from VAT but a walking stick purchased by someone disabled who uses it as a disability aid is exempt, under existing VAT law without the specific exemption.

Presumably Government granted this blanket VAT exemption for Motability vehicles to save itself money because otherwise it will have to assess the merits of whether a car qualifies as having features that make it a disability aid separately in every individual case every time a disabled person leases or buys one privately, rather than relying on the fact that the severity of the person’s disability has been verified already by the DWP. That’ll be thousands of additional civil servants it needs to employ in HMRC.

Personally, I hope a large number of people now leave the Morability scheme and use their money to lease/ buy vehicles privately instead then bombard the Government with VAT exemption applications for every single purchase which will cost them billions in administration costs to process. It might teach them a lesson and will serve them bloody right. I’ll happily watch Reeves cry again when her latest attempts to make disabled people suffer for her incompetence and ineptitude don’t pay off.

Please don’t listen to the stupid people here. Do you have anybody with you?

@mnhq - can this thread by suspended if the poster above needs intervention or assistance as a matter of priority?

This is no longer a matter of debating points of view if something MN hosts causes this much distress. People might have a right I say what they want but at what cost.

Any chance people could pause the slinging match for a bit? On this thread at least

They talk about welfare. They are concerned about the Government taking actions that are simultaneously strangling any prospect of growth and therefore productivity and workforce participation falling further raising the welfare bill higher. They are concerned are primarily by the out of control pensioner expenses which make up over 50% of the welfare bill and rising rapidly with not even a mention of this by Government, and the fact that after the tax rises last year none of it was redirected to productive investment and all was thrown into the NHS black hole.

Nobody mentions Motability because such people understand the obvious fact that it’s completely irrelevant from a fiscal point of view so it’s of no interest to anybody (unless you happen to be a disabled person using the scheme which is now being sabotaged, of course). The only people who are obsessed with it are the economically illiterate and journalists antagonising them to froth at the mouth about it to clickbait them for more advertising revenue. What will matter tomorrow is whether she has any policies that will generate growth or is actually dumb enough to go ahead with attacking pensions (and therefore the investment which the UK desperately needs, while baking in even higher long-term welfare costs by damaging retirement saving) and hammers employers with more taxes again, further lowering productivity and causing more redundancies etc, and then throws yet more of this money away on inflationary handouts to her preferred people while distorting the UK tax system even further and making it an even less attractive place to work or operate a business.

Whataboutery!

What has redundancies got to do with people complaining they are on low wages, and fed up their tax of funding the disabled, when their tax doesn’t fund themselves? Irrelevant!

You clearly don't understand the additional costs that come with having a disabled child. Its a very different ball game to raising a typical child. Often means that one parents has to leave work or reduce working hours massively. The income penalty for parents of disabled children is huge and someone earning 60k wouldn't be able to absorb all these extra costs. I guess you are not caring for a child with very complex needs and aren't able to earn a full wage whilst having to fork out all sorts of extra coats from your own pocket?