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.

Your logic is that things like anxiety have no medical test so anyone claiming for it must be taking the piss.

I completely understand your frustration.

At no point did I say that.

I’m an economist. A few facts:

We need to cut welfare spending.

It’s unaffordable.
The ballooning disability benefits bill is a big part of this.
We either choose to freeze benefits or decide we’re not going to fund things that we funded in the past. So if we’re cutting the NHS bill we might like to decide that we cut ivf or dentistry (both roll which are a gamble anyway).
If we are cutting disability benefits i think it’s far fairer that we remove everything other than severe mental and physical health conditions.

But the government are too scared to face the truth, will keep running up borrowing, reform will get in next time and EVERY disability benefit will be slashed. We cannot go on pretending we have endless money. Even mid earners are leaving because they’re heartily sick of paying for nonsense like cars for anxious people.

No there isn’t, but you don’t get HRM just by telling your GP you have anxiety. Usually there has to be substantial evidence to back up how you claim the anxiety impacts you. This would come in the form of psychiatric reports and prescriptions for more serious medications, not the first line treatment. Very few people would be able to fake it to that level, it’s not just about self reporting to your GP

"They are not paying enough tax...."

A thousand jobs are being lost every day. That's a thousand people with dependants losing their jobs every day. And you think they're not paying enough tax?

Strewth.

You’d be amazed at the lengths people go to sadly, taking away funds from who really need it.

It’s not the ‘passing the test’ that’s the issue, it’s just that anxiety shouldn’t be a factor that gets you benefits at all. You wonder how we’d cope if ww2 was these days!

So cut the PIP for people who use it for taxis to get to their support groups. They end up more mentally unwell and cost the NHS more in treatment etc.

Do you really think psychiatric intervention results in the specialists being fooled that easily? Really?

I’m afraid that’s the same thing

Fine. Either that or they find away around it, take some responsibility etc.

This. I am fed up with people thinking you just tell your GP you are anxious and you get PIP. It is a long and hard road. Lots of people don't even bother trying to claim as they know it will make their MH even worse.

yeah many people would love to go back to the days when the only assistance was the death-trap "Invalid Carriage" - withdrawn in 2003

Can someone please explain the benefit of this change when it will save the taxpayer absolutely no money? Payments to the disabled person will be exactly the same. How can it be about anything but optics?

Claiming to have anxiety about planning a journey won’t get beyond a GP.

Indeed. It’s just optics. There was talk that motability would have to start charging vat though too. That would be a big saving.

I already noted the VAT exemption in an earlier post. This applies to all equipment purchased due to a disability and all medicines/ medical supplies. What exactly is your argument against this being the case? We don’t charge VAT on basic essential food either, or children’s clothes, for similar reasons - we recognise the important of a decent society not taxing such things. Tax is generally used to disincentivise negative behaviour and incentivise beneficial behaviour or things which are recognised goods” for society as a whole (or should be, if we didn’t have utter morons running the country). Disabled people being able to participate in life means many are taxpayers, it lowers healthcare, social care and welfare costs, increases productivity, so even if you don’t care about other people’s wellbeing there’s a strong economic argument for state support for disabled people given the payback rate for every pound spent is many multiples of that £1. Therefore, if you reduce PIP other public spending costs will rise by more than is saved (including the welfare bill because many people who ccurrently claim PIP and work will have to give up work and claim other benefits such as universal credit to cover the normal living costs they currently pay from their own earnings, and their tax contributions will cease). It’s also been demonstrated in multiple studies that means testing it would cost far more than is saved, unsurprisingly, given that on average disabled people are in the poorest decile of society: hence the need for PIP in the first place because disability is financially devastating for most people. The few outliers who are well off AND still claim would not cover even 5% of the cost of the means testing process.

The same is the case with SEND education - it pays for itself many times over, not that you’d know it from the economically illiterate narrative adopted by many politicians including the current excuse for an education secretary who is impervious to facts and data, ironically.

As I stated, UK spending on disabled people has remained fairly static as a percentage of GDP for the last 50 years. It is also one of the lowest in the G7 and below average even in the OECD. The economic illiteracy of our politicians and the general population is quite shocking, as was demonstrated by the idiocy of Brexit.

They don't need to. They are eligible for PIP and use it to get to and pay for groups.

Can I get your honest view? Is the state of the economy due to the Tories alone?

Who is better on economic policy, Tories or Labour?

But the change I think we need to see is that their PIP ought to be taken away. It’s unaffordable to pay disability benefit to people with non-severe mental health conditions. Run the courses, but they have to make their own way there and find the time to attend.

Just imagine if we stopped all pip for anxiety, ADHD etc we may actually have enough money to properly section those who are danger to society. But we can’t just now because we have no money. People seem to think the money we have is endless. It’s just not. We need to prioritise the seriously mentally ill.

How?!

If a car costs £5 lease over 5 years and PIP is £5k over 5 years it costs the
government £5k.

If a car costs £25k to lease over 5 years it still costs the government £5k. It costs the car lesser the other £20k.

So why does stopping the lease if cars costing £25k save the government money?

(made up amounts for illustrative reasons).

I was quite clear on what I need; what reasonably priced car can I find with those features?

Not sure it's a Labour vs Tories thing when Rachel Reeves has been leaning on Jeremy Hunt recently. It doesn't matter if the rosette is red or blue, it's still brown, because everything has turned to poop under the government's watch. And yet, people beg them to borrow more and spend more.

At this point, Labour is stringing stuff along until they can dump it into the lap of the next government, ie Reform. Hopefully it all blows up in their faces long before that.

If “Ralphie” was an economist they’d be aware that the Motability scheme or which cars are available through it has no impact on the welfare bill.