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Under the Motability scheme, recipients of disability benefits including Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) can use their handouts to lease a brand new car.
Those who receive the higher rate of mobility PIP, which is worth £77.05 per week, agree to have the Government send the money directly to Motability instead.
So it's a disability payment which instead of being paid directly to the claimant, goes to Motability. Stopping that won't reduce the welfare bill.
“Disabled people face so many barriers in accessing transport,” Mark Carew said. (Full disclosure: he co-wrote a report which received funding from Motability in 2023.) “Whether it’s train stations that aren’t wheelchair accessible, or no ramp available when you’ve booked it, or other travellers refusing to get out of the wheelchair space – there are lots of reasons Motability is important.”
Pip funding that goes to Motability is money that customers would have been getting anyway.
If they weren’t getting a car, they’d have it to spend on something else. And if they want a more expensive car – perhaps needing a bigger vehicle for essential equipment, perhaps shockingly able to have preferences despite also having a disability – they have to make a down payment out of their own pocket.
The cars are new, meanwhile, so that they retain a significant resale value at the end of the lease. “It’s just not true that it’s ‘free’,” Carew said. “And because it comes out of an existing Pip award, it’s at no additional cost to the taxpayer.” Scrapping Motability wouldn’t save a penny from the benefits bill.
Because of [the top-up fee claimants can pay to get a more expensive car], the cost to the taxpayer of the more expensive models is exactly the same.
The cherrypicking coverage implies that disabled people shouldn’t get a choice: instead, they should exist in a state of constant gratitude, and **** off in their wonky three-wheeler.
You should read the second article linked to, particularly regarding the lies and gross misrepresentations the right-wing media have pumped out.
That is unless, of course, all you're interested in doing is scoring politically motivated points against a party that you'll never like, no matter what they do.
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