Motor Vehicles (Compulsory Insurance) Bill

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 28th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb), and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) on this excellent Bill. I have been in my place for only a couple of years, but in this House it sometimes feels as if the job of Parliament is to add to legislation, and it is also really important that we look at deregulation. When we see regulation that is costly and has no support from industry or consumers, and that does not work practically, it is very much the business of this House to root it out.

We have talked a bit about the Vnuk ruling and how it will apply to the EU 2009 motor insurance directive, which would extend compulsory insurance to vehicles on private land and possibly to vehicles not constructed for road use. My hon. Friend the hon. Member for Wellingborough mentioned golf buggies, tractors and ride-on mowers, but there is also a real possibility that it might affect mobility scooters.

I support the Bill because not only would that regulation add huge costs to motor insurance, but it is not wanted in this country and, practically, it does not work. We have heard about some of the costs; I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge that, at this time, adding a motor insurance hike of £2 billion—an average £50 rise for 25 million people—is not something we want to pursue. Although we may have different views across the House, and indeed across our party, on how to address the cost of living issue, we can all agree that it is a real issue this year and we do not want to add to that through unnecessary regulation.

The Department for Transport did run a consultation in 2016-17. There were 902 respondents, 94% of whom rejected the policy. That consultation was not just industry-based but included members of the public. When regulation is not wanted by industry or the consumer, we have to wonder why we feel we can impose that on the British people.

On whether the regulation would work, RSA’s consultation response shows that there is no guarantee that private insurance markets would provide competitive policies. It is a very bad idea for Government to intervene on insurance markets and force them to put forward products that they would not necessarily do themselves. There is no guarantee that the products work and that they would be at a decent cost to consumers. Looking at some of the vehicles that the regulation might extend to shows that there is no clear practical way of enforcing the legislation. The sheer volume of claims that might end up coming forward could overwhelm the insurance industry, which would not work for anyone at all.

Finally, to echo the point made by other hon. Members who have spoken, let us look at why we are in this place. The EU has not yet put forward the legislation, but because the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 took a snapshot of EU law on 31 December 2020, we are still having to use some EU law unless we decide to overturn it. The EU courts must have regard to the existing decisions and general principles set out by the European court before 2020. That is a really good example of the real-world effects of a relentless, bureaucratic engine and a one-size-fits-all policy approach on our consumers here, when it is not wanted.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Wellingborough on one of my favourite pieces of legislation, which I am happy to support.