We agree with the government
stance on key car insurance issues
14 Jan 2011
by Donald MacKenzie
In the last eight blogs, we've laid out the government's plans in
relation to containing car insurance
costs, including dealing with
young driver risk.
These eight blogs are based on Road Safety Minister Mike Penning's
recent
evidence
to the Transport Select Committee, as part of their enquiry into
increasing car insurance costs.
On listening to his evidence, it became clear that his position on all
these key areas was the same as ours, as published previously on this
site, notably in this blog,
our comment section,
and in our industry report the
Road Ahead.
While we would not try to suggest that we have shaped government
policy, it is to be welcomed that the government is willing to look at
and to intervene within these critical areas in relation to car
insurance and road safety from a practical perspective. Indeed, they
have gone further than we expected in relation to allowing insurers to
see DVLA data (with driver consent).
A quick recap on these areas of mutuality between the Transport
Minister and this site provides a summary of the key issues that the
government aims to address. The headings are the government proposals
as reported in our recent blogs. These headings link to the relevant
blogs. In the text, we summarise our previous posts on these issues.
Again, links can be followed for more detail.
We have commented before that
we
believed that insurer access to DVLA
data
would be a useful development although we did not expect the government
to proceed with it owing to potential problems with data protection.
However, while the Minister is checking out the latter issue with legal
advisors, he expects to be able to introduce it within six months.
We have advocated for the
need for continuous
insurance
enforcement, including the need to get tough with
uninsured drivers. We share the Minister's view that the routine
destruction of cars will be central to the impact of this development.
We have spoken about the need
to
invesigate the possibility of introducing a minimum whiplash speed in
this country. The Minister has undertaken this investigation and
reports that our legal system precludes it.
We have argued that sanctions for fraud were inadequate
and called for prosecution of offenders on a more widespread basis.
We have, on numeorus
occasions,
supported the Jackson Report
recommendations.
Central to these recommendations, that form the core of a current green
paper, is the need to contain personal injury lawyer costs.
We have made this
recommendation,
for example, in our industry report, the Road Ahead, discussed further
in our blog Call for better education of children on
driving and road safety.
This is also one of our
recommendations in our report: the Road Ahead, reviewed in our blog Time
for a new driving test to improve young driver skills.
Again, a recommndation in the Road Ahead, reviewed in our
blog Pass
Plus should be better supported by car insurance providers. |
So there you have it.
What the government plans
to do in relation to dealing with costly car insurance and its wider
context. In as far as it goes, it's what we were hoping for.
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