Yup, its never as simplistic as “they are ripping us all off”, the scheme is very complex, they also have to be conservative in their approach as running out of cash is a huge no-no.
They will be making good money at the moment as cars let 3/4 years ago are coming in with a much higher secondhand value than they planned for, that should translate to cash back for us (oh look, it did) and hopefully lower AP’s – although rising car prices are outstripping our benefit by quite a way so don’t hold your breath on that one.
As for Scotland pushing for a second scheme, competition can be good, but I suspect it is more like the usual “We want a Scottish Scheme for Scottish People” rhetoric – you know, the same one as used in the “We won’t award the ferry building to the lowest, best (foreign) bidder, we will give it to a small Scottish firm with no experience building anything over 40ft long. Scottish ferries for Scottish folk!”. So expect the Scottish scheme to offer cars from Arnold Clark showrooms only. It will start off saying we have a choice of provider before quietly taking that choice away claiming some spurious national reason. The scheme will bleed cash like a harpooned whale and offer about 1/2 the cars on the Motability scheme at 1.5 times the cost. All cars over 4.5m will be banned as unnecessary as will anything the Scottish Greens don’t like (that’s anything not pedal powered or available with a bus pass).
Finally, if it ever does retain a profit, the Scottish Government will be eyeing it up like a junkie after their fix and will pass a law /change the charity status and take it. I know, because they did that to us for just £40m in savings we took years to build up.
I am in Scotland, so time will tell.
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