Tory councillor Mieka Smiles says Labour needed to crack down on the Motability scheme (Image: Getty)
Everyone has a rage-provoking tale of a benefits scrounger. A long-distant cousin or next-door-but-one neighbour who has been gaming the over-generous system for years to sit on their backside. When you’re at work all day and grafting hard these stories really rankle. Reasonable people ask “Why on earth should my taxes — which already take too much of my pay — be funding the lifestyle of someone who simply cannot be arsed to work?”.
This is a long-running problem that neither the Conservatives or Labour have cracked down on anywhere near enough — and although the reforms yesterday at least make a step in the right direction, they aren’t anywhere near as severe as they need to be. It’s my genuine belief that there should be a safety net in society for those who are unable to work — be that temporarily or permanently — due to ill health. But since Covid the tab to fund this has mushroomed in the most alarming of ways.
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One thing that has always baffled me is the Motability scheme. For the uninitiated, this is a long-running system that was originally designed to help the most vulnerable disabled people use their disability payments to buy a new car. It is right that those who genuinely need it are able to get the places they need to be safely.
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Labour's Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Liz Kendall should have gone further says Mieka Smiles (Image: Getty)
If a claimant hands over a proportion of their weekly mobility benefit there are 167 models to choose from. The car comes with a huge host of freebies — from road tax to the installation of a charge point for electric cars. In a totally unnecessary quirk, claimants can also apply for a new model every three years. Hardworking families the length and breadth of the country could only aspire to having a new motor on their drive with such regularity.
Perhaps somewhat predictably, the scheme — which started in good faith in 1977 — has now morphed into something quite different, with so-called ‘sickfluencers’ now advising fellow social media users on how to bag a new motor using it. An astonishing one in five of all new vehicles in the UK are now sold using the scheme and the fleet of cars under it is valued at ￡14 billion. So that’s where our cash is going...
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Indeed, The Sun reports that thousands claiming to have issues such as anxiety have been allowed to sign up for luxury BMWs and Mercedes 4x4s. What? And it doesn’t stop there, as taxpayers are now funding some taking advantage of the scheme to have free driving lessons.
It’s become a total laughing stock and — as Lord Ashcroft so succinctly put it yesterday on an X post — many are “taking the piss.” Lord Ashcroft, who is a former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party as well as businessman and author, was unequivocal about his views of the scheme. He said: “It’s time for the Motability scheme to be wound up or seriously restricted to the most needy…”. Hear, hear.
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The replies to his post are enlightening — and sadly all too familiar to many of us.
One said: “An able-bodied lady who lives on the same street as my father-in-law has a Motability vehicle to this day, claimed for on behalf of her disabled husband. He died in 2012.”
Another said: “My mum wasn’t a driver but the amount of extended family and friends offering her cash if she would get a car for them was eye-opening.”
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And another: “I once had a business meeting with a company director who turned up in a shiny new BMW 1-Series Sport — and seemed it as a butcher’s dog…After complimenting him on his nice new car, he said ‘yes, it’s my new Motability transport!’.”
Why are those who apply for this kind of help given anything other than help towards using a safe and basic motor that can do the job? Having a system that allows those on benefits to put towards a luxury car they really want has no doubt ballooned the amount of those with questionable claims now bezzing about in Beemers.
That’s not the only way that the system is being abused. There are others who are claiming the allowance simply so relatives in their family can bag a new motor. It’s absolutely outrageous. That is why Labour should threaten and impose the strongest possible punishments for those who scam the system. And, on that matter, for anyone who abuses benefits. Labour had a golden opportunity to sort out this scandal yesterday - but as it stands it’s UK taxpayers who feel like they're being driven up the wall.