Luxury cars removed from Motability scheme ahead of budget
https://news.sky.com/story/luxury-cars-removed-from-motability-scheme-ahead-of-budget-13475029
Posted by StGuthlac2025
Luxury cars removed from Motability scheme ahead of budget
https://news.sky.com/story/luxury-cars-removed-from-motability-scheme-ahead-of-budget-13475029
Posted by StGuthlac2025
22 Comments
Its no different that a company car – pick one of 3 or 4 car chosen by employer. Keeps it simple.
I have no issue with people on mobility chosing whatever car they want, but its an easy target for people who want to attack the Welfare system.
It used to be people on benefits v’s widescreen TVs back in the early 2000’s.
The scheme is to get people a car, not help them buy a nicer car than they can afford. Considering how benefits around children are means tested it’s a bit wild that you can buy a luxury car you can’t afford because of government help
They’re also working with manufacturers in Britain to support British built cars now. If my taxes are buying cars they can at least be locally made
How about only British made cars as well.
Why are we pouring British tax money into other countries?
Edit: evidently by the replies, no one here understands supply and demand.
Terrible idea because the Nissan Juke is one of the few British built cars out there at the moment. I don’t want to see _more_ Jukes on the road thank you very much
I think it’s a positive step, tax payers shouldn’t be contributing to ‘luxury’ cars for this scheme, just functional cars. Give them Vauxhalls or similar brand of more budget vehicle. I have heard there is quite a lot of abuse of the system, although think it’s a good thing for those who genuinely need something to get around and can’t afford.
They need to reign in who is eligible too. My auntie had polio as a kid which gave her a very slight limp but she qualified.
They bought a land Rover discovery with it so they could tow their mahoosive caravan to their caravan club swingers events.
The amount of people on here ranting about British made cars who can’t even Google it. British made cars include the vauxhall astra, Toyota Corolla and nissan qashqai
The problem I see with this is people don’t actually know how much cars cost now.
They may have removed luxury marquees, but have they removed expensive vehicles?
Luxury brands don’t exclusively make expensive cars now
Even if Motability cars were scrapped, the claimant still gets their allowance, so as another poster said, there is no net benefit there to the government…
Once again, the media makes us easily led and divisive. Yes, it may be cheaper overall as it includes insurance and service, but that’s how the scheme has been negotiated/setup, that’s not a fault of the claimants, it just shows that were being shafted by the big corporates when it comes for paying for our own insurance – that’s where the anger should be directed.
The us vs them attitude is such a dangerous rhetoric and distracts from the actual issues going on in our country.
Perhaps a selection of upgraded/luxury cars is not the most ideal, but again, as another poster has said.. the motability leases actually prop up the second hand market and makes it cheaper for people to buy cars.. are people now willfully wishing for a hike in price for second hand cars..? It’s rather backward.
Standard mobility is £29.20/week; enhanced is £77.05/week. You hand over the full allowance in return for a leased vehicle, with optional upfront payments up to ~£8k for higher-spec models. Leases last 3 years. Cars with no upfront cost are usually small city cars.
Disabled people are not the reason why you have less money. It is a headline grabber so the gov can appear to be tough on benefit scroungers. The scroungers will still scrounge and the everyday disabled people who generally play by the rules and don’t want to make a fuss, suffer.
The luxury brand option are BMW 1 series, MB A Class and Audi A1. There’s a couple small family car options a couple of small cross-overs. The trim levels poor and don’t come with options.
Nobody gets a tricked out car on Motability. The scheme isn’t just for pip, it also serves veterans. It’s there to help people be independent and not be otherwise disadvantaged because they’re disabled.
This is going to have some unintended effects. Motability is a massive fleet – they actually get incredible deals for the vehicles that are on the fleet.
Now you’re funnelling all that demand into a much smaller pool of vehicles – so manufacturers can just charge more for the ‘basic’ cars. Secondly, I reckon the used car market prices are about to shoot up – they make up a big part of the used car market.
You can have the most expensive let’s say “Vauxhall” cost the same as a smaller “luxury car” so the Vat would be similar!
Also if you’re in a wheelchair you can buy a new car with no VAT also.
The amount of hate and envy towards disabled people being shown in this thread is utterly disgusting.
It’s reading the comment section of the Daily Mail FFS..
Good. Yet another scheme being abused. Take my sister for example – carer to her wheelchair bound life long friend. Finding it difficult to lift her in and out of their 3 series BMW, they purchased a 1 series on the mobility scheme in the friends name with all the discounts to boot. The car lives on my sisters driveway. The car is used 95% of the time without the friend and it’s just a second car for my sister.
Oh, and my sister doesn’t actually care for her 99% of the time. She outsources it to her brothers family at a cheaper rate so she can go do her own job earning £140k as a a legal aid to the courts all whilst permitting mortgage fraud because she owns the house the friend lives in and rents it to them unofficially. Fantastic.
>Motability Operations, the charity which operates the scheme, says the aim is for 50% of vehicles leased to be built in Britain by 2035, claiming it will support UK economic growth with a demand for 150,000 vehicles every year.
Yet more nationalist protectionism. Forcing people to buy British and invest in Britain seems to be a theme with the Starmer government and I hate it.
If they want British industry to sell more products, the thing to do is provide greater support for R&D spending or upskilling so British products are excellent and can win in a fair fight against products from elsewhere.
Ideally. They should only recieve a car which is barebones. Literally just good for getting from A to B
I don’t even think the scheme should exist. Driving isn’t a human right. It’s a privilege
Any Government funded scheme should prioritise ‘Made in Britain’. The subsidies need to support British economy and jobs if we want to come out of this economic stagnation.
I think a lot of people here are missing the fact that the vast majority of these cars are modified to fit the needs of disabled people. Yeah they could probably go and afford to buy a used luxury car, or even a brand new one. Pip isn’t means tested so you can be a millionaire and still have it. But those cars don’t have the modifications required. An awful lot of people have said “given a car”. From what i’ve seen, these cars have had their prices inflated, and you only lease them, you HAVE to give it back after a certain amount of time (3 years). Maybe they should make a scheme for able bodied people to lease cars and give them back, but then you would all complain about how unfair and unaffordable and unreasonable it is to be forced to give the car back and then spend so much more on another one. It isn’t really about luxury cars, but even so I don’t look at a BMW with a blue badge and think, ugh, you don’t deserve that, just because I have a beat up 10 year old fiat. I hope that if that person has arthritis, their hands stay nice and toasty this winter in that car and I hope it heats up a hell of a lot faster than mine does. There’s a lot of bias against PIP because it’s not means tested, but it’s because it’s meant to make life easier for disabled people. That’s why a lot of people on pip don’t have a car, because if you look on the gov website there’s two levels and 4 sections of what you can be entitled to. But I think it’s all rigged, motability is rigged to profit off disabled people, UC is rigged against working students and poor people, child tax is rigged against literally everyone with a child, why not have inflated CT while the kids are little so that parents can stay at home and actually care for their children?
I don’t think state benefits should be funding brand-new cars, regardless of whether they’re a “luxury” model or a £30000 electric car. There’s 860,000 Motability customers in the UK now that’s massive.
It feels unfair to people who pay taxes that are transferred to this 860k and can’t afford a new car themselves. And it may discourage some work. The average age is 52 and probably some have manageable health conditions who could stay have stayed employed.
I have also seen signs of misuse, like someone openly talking about using a Motability vehicle for purposes it wasn’t allowed for.
I don’t know anyone who is on motability who has a luxury car…due to the deposit needed…a friend has a Vauxhall…that was around 1k deposit…the luxury ones are usually over 5k minimum
See a lot of comments and the consensus seems to be give the scrounging cripples a invacar or a modest banger.
But it detracts from the actual point in the scheme. To get disabled people more mobile.
My late father was a recipient of motability, he had quite severe spinal problems and it was a nightmare for him to get in and out of. He never wanted to leave the house. Once he was awarded motability he used it to get a Mokka, the extra height of the seats made it so much easier and allowed him to leave the house more.
I had a friend that was born without fully developed limbs due to Thalidomide. He used to pay a fortune extra to get a mercedes simply because their automatic vehicles were so much better than other brands and gave him the accessibility to be able to drive, which other brands did not offer.
Weirdly I remember going to look at cars with him and it was cheaper to get a more basic mercedes auto than to get say a vauxhall or ford and pay the extra for a automatic spec addon.
TBF I have said all along the scheme should benefit british industry but not one car fits all needs. but the narative of but so and so got a bmw convertible and has to audacity to go on holiday is BS.
Dig up Rover , create a hatchback, suv and other options and call it a day