DWP — In yet another escalation of its performative penalisation of disabled drivers, the Motability scheme is now planning to fit all vehicles for under-30s with compulsory black boxes.
The devices track the car’s speed, braking and rest habits. Using this information, they issue drivers with a weekly red, amber or green rating. If drivers receive more than four reds over a year, they face losing access to the vital lifeline.
DWP and Motability
The Motability Scheme allows disabled people to exchange their qualifying mobility allowance for the lease of a vehicle. The Scheme is delivered by Motability Operations, a commercial organisation, which is in turn governed by the Motability Foundation charity.
Motability currently helps around 860,000 people get around with a greater degree of independence. It’s funded primarily through the Motability Endowment Trust and the exchange of individuals’ mobility allowance payments, as part of the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) Personal Independence Payment (PIP).
However, the DWP has recently confirmed that, from 1 July, VAT and Insurance Premium Tax will apply to most new car leases. This means it will cost more to deliver the Motability scheme.
As such, Motability Foundation has been left scrabbling to find savings. Chief executive Nigel Fletcher explained it would be hit with a price rise of around £1,100 per driver:
A lot of disabled people won’t be able to afford that, so we’re now having to try and work out how can we make changes to the scheme that protects pricing as much as we possibly can.
The mandatory black boxes for under 30s form part of this cost-cutting drive. Fletcher described this as being about “keeping prices down and keeping people safe”. As part of a pilot of the black box scheme, started back in September in Northern Ireland, it’s already removed 300 drivers. However, Fletcher stated that:
They will get lots of warnings before they get taken off the scheme. And then if they are taken off the scheme, we will need to start looking at what our policies are around allowing them back onto the scheme in the future.
‘It’s not a point about our safety’
However, critics of the black-box scheme have called out this clear penalisation of younger disabled drivers. For example, actor Keron Day leases a specially adapted wheelchair accessible vehicle (WAV) through Motability. He pointed out that:
Disabled people need to have the choice, just like everybody else.
If I passed [my driving test] aged 17, I would have 13 years of a mandatory black box. None of my non-disabled peers would have that.
We all have to pass the exact same driving tests that everybody else does, so it’s not a point about our safety.
Likewise, Eva Hanna leases a car with hand controls. She observed that the black box fitted to her car issued amber and even red reports for jerky driving. However, this is likely a consequence of the adaptations, rather than her own skill in driving:
The braking and acceleration can be a bit more sensitive, because obviously it’s not the same as using your feet.
You have to pull on the brake a little, or you have to pull on the accelerator to get it going. So I’ve found that during my journey I might have braked too hard or accelerated too harshly.
Faced with this problem, Fletcher stated that Motability was unaware of the potential flaw. However, he added that the scheme would continue to gather information.
Performative cruelty
These cuts to Motability — along with the ‘luxury cars’ fiasco and halving mileage allowances — just happen to follow immediately after the scheme became a favoured target of the right.
As critics have highlighted, disabled drivers are already subject to the same qualification thresholds and safety laws as the rest of us. This is a cost-saving measure, purely and simply.
We need look no further than its application to the under-30s as proof of its discriminatory nature. Sure, younger drivers are statistically more likely to be less safe — but if the boxes make them safer, surely the same logic would apply to the over-30s equally?
This amounts to nothing more than the latest in a series of performative blows to the disabled community. Whether it’s the wider government, the Labour Party, or the DWP itself, they’re using disabled people’s receipt of a ‘benefits’ payment as open permission to penalise and discriminate against the community.
Featured image via MyLondon
