To be honest I surprised why Motability vehicle are not all fitted with trackers and or Motability on the no plates, there has to be a way of stopping all this abuse, as previously with all this publicity genuine disabled people will suffer.
Both suggestions would be highly problematic.
The cost of putting trackers on all vehicles would be phenomenal (easily over £100m) and that cost would have to be paid for by scheme members through higher APs. On top of that, Motability would need to employ hundreds more staff to monitor them (again, extra cost, passed on to scheme members) and what would they be looking for? Short of movements that clearly indicate a taxi, they would have no way of knowing what the car was being used for, who was in the car and whether or not the disabled person would benefit.
As for marking the car in some way to designate it as a Motability car, that would be the tipping point for many legitimate users to leave the scheme (my wife included). Aside from being a generally bad idea, it would create no end of problems. You only have to glance at some of the comments online from the ignorant Neanderthals who weigh in every time the scheme is mentioned to know that marked cars would become targets, as would the people in them. I’d suggest that there would be targeted vandalism (especially against the better cars like BMWs) from the green eyed mob who would love the car but not the disability that goes with it. Someone with an i4 posted the other day that they now felt uncomfortable enough as it was parking in a blue badge bay (incidentally, you can always tell if an i4 is a Motability car as it will be the 35 model – 90% of private buyers get the 40 and 50 models 😉). Also, Motability would be inundated with disgruntled workmates ‘reporting’ able bodied colleagues who turn up at work every day in a Motability car. These people would have no idea that if the benefit recipient can’t work and their partner is the breadwinner, then the partner using the car for commuting every day is perfectly within the scheme rules.
For the above reasons, and others, neither idea makes much sense. I’d argue that if Motability removed cars from 5,300 people last year due to abuse, then they are already doing a great job in that regard. By far the bigger problem is people getting the qualifying entitlement who shouldn’t, and last weeks announcement is the first step in addressing that, although I’m surprised that they didn’t tighten up the mobility criteria of PIP as well as daily living. The ‘ability to follow the route of a familiar journey without assistance’ question remains an obvious area that many will exploit and is difficult to disprove, but that’s a government issue and nothing to do with Motability.
