The £2000 Car-Scrap Scheme Myth

In the Time Budget supplement Ben Webster points out the mythologies of the benefit to a car owner of the car-scrap scheme policy from the Darling budget.

The headline figure was that it would be worth £2000 per car or van aged over 10 years scrapped between 1 May 2009 and 1 March 2010 and replaced with a new car. However, only £1000 of that is coming from the Government the other thousand will be matched by the industry at the floor court. Thing is to try and encourage such sales most retailers are already offering at least that level of discount. Therefore will the price of cars on the forecourt go up to the real figure to allow the retailers to actually be seen to give this full £2000 benefit.

Also scraping cars over 10 years old irrelevant of condition is poor environmental move. Many cars just over this age are still environmental. The only reason that I got rid of my late father's car last year was that it had become too expensive to repair just after getting through it's 12 year MOT. Also the people most likely to be able to buy new cars anyway are the wealthy. Personally I have never owned a new car. Even many of my parents cars have been ex-hire cars, several of these serving a year on one of the channel islands before being sold on to them. While the tax is aimed at helping the car industry is does little for the poor and the environment.

There are also 9.5 millions vehicles that would be eligible for this scheme, Darling has earmarked £300m for this scheme, therefore it would be the first 300,000 people after May the first to take advantage who will benefit. Probably best if your old car still runs to keep it running folks.