From rapidly expanding personal debt levels to a looming legal crisis over undisclosed commissions, the UK’s once-stalwart car finance sector has seldom faced so many foundational challenges at once. Over the past decade, as dealerships, banks and specialised finance houses scrambled to supply the relentless demand for new vehicles, the market’s structure has changed dramatically. Newer financing methods like Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) have become commonplace, replacing outright ownership as the dominant mode of acquisition, yet lurking beneath this boom are warning signs all too reminiscent of previous financial upheavals.
Central to the growing crisis is the hidden commissions scandal, rooted in the symbiotic relationship between car dealerships and finance providers, where dealers were frequently incentivised to arrange finance agreements that maximised their own commissions rather than securing the most competitive interest rates for consumers. Consequently, many customers, often unaware of the mechanics of their financing deal, were paying inflated interest rates, not because of their creditworthiness, but because dealers had a financial incentive to push more expensive loans against the best interests of their own customers.
However, after a landmark Court of Appeal ruling in 2023, which deemed these hidden commissions unlawful, a tidal wave of legal challenges has erupted, with compensation claims already surpassing 60,000 complaints lodged with the Financial Ombudsman Service. But this is only the beginning and there are expectations that this scandal could rival that of the £38 billion paid out for the PPI mis-selling scandal, with estimates ranging between £30 billion and £44 billion of expected compensation.
Unsurprisingly, the current Government is acutely aware of the possible fallout from this emerging scandal, with Chancellor Rachel Reeves attempting to intervene in the Supreme Court process, expressing concerns that massive compensation pay-outs might destabilise Britain’s car finance infrastructure. Reeves insisted that her goal is primarily to protect working families and prevent the UK’s car finance market from imploding under the weight of potentially gigantic pay-outs. However, the Supreme Court has thus far blocked the Chancellor’s attempt to formally weigh in, underscoring the judiciary’s independence in the case, potentially forcing major lenders to absorb billions in retrospective compensation.
In the midst of this precarious situation stands Motability, a powerful entity owned by major banks and operating as a not-for-profit that manages a fleet of over 800,000 vehicles and logged revenues just under £7 billion in 2024, making it the country’s largest fleet operator. The question now remains whether Motability’s dominance is masking deeper fractures within the car finance market, artificially boosting sales volumes in a sector that otherwise might have shown a more significant contraction and concealing the scale of a broader bubble. At the same time, political scrutiny of Motability’s role in the car market is intensifying, with mounting pressure on Government spending and a growing debate over corporate governance in publicly linked institutions. This could potentially lead to the scheme facing further regulatory intervention or budgetary constraints in the near future.
Adding fuel to the fire, Labour’s proposed overhaul of welfare spending, including substantial cuts to disability benefits supporting Motability, places the organisation squarely in the crosshairs. Due to the industry’s growing reliance upon new car purchases funded via the scheme, its continuation is critical for market stability. Policymakers face the complex challenge of maintaining Motability’s social objectives without exacerbating market vulnerabilities. With legal and economic pressures growing, the UK’s car finance sector appears increasingly fragile, raising urgent questions about how long it can withstand these compounding threats.
In a sector that employs thousands and generates billions in transactions each year, any significant shock has the potential to reverberate well beyond the showrooms and into the broader financial landscape. If the legal and economic headwinds facing the wider car finance market continue to intensify, particularly with the looming threat of multi-billion-pound compensation payouts, the sector could be edging towards a long-overdue reckoning. In a market increasingly reliant on subsidies and opaque lending structures, the question is no longer whether cracks are forming, but how long the foundations can hold.
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Why not posthumously honour Mengele whilst they are at it? The Royal Society has always been scientifically suspect having staunchly defended garbage like aether theory and being over run by the fixists pre ww2.
Ether exists. Space is full of particles. Einstein the Jewish wizard and fraud was completely wrong. So wrong he quietly inserted the ether back into the GTR in 1915 having taken it out to make his equations balance in the STR of 1905. Relativity is to put it nicely, utter bullshit.
Relativity is pretty well proven the atomic clock experiment as well as the gravitational shift to red of light are pretty robust. The quackery in physics came with the Copenhagen interpretation of QM, which is palpable bs, IE the moon doesn’t exist till I look at it.
Agreed.
The big problem for the Copenhagen interpretation aside from the stupidity of observation determining probabilistically the state of a system is David Bohm’s deterministic version of QM.
And the problem is this – as a QM theory has been devised which is not probabilitistic but deterministic which works – which David Bohm’s does then that shows QM is really not about probabilities at all and trashes the Copehagen interpretation.
So Neils Bohr et al were really not as smart as they thought they were when they kept on trashing Einstein’s view that God does not play dice.
God might play dice but not with the laws of nature.
Bohmian Mechanics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Bohmian mechanics, which is also called the de Broglie-Bohm theory, the pilot-wave model, and the causal interpretation of quantum mechanics, is a version of quantum theory discovered by Louis de Broglie in 1927 and rediscovered by David Bohm in 1952.
…..
Bell did not establish the impossibility of a deterministic reformulation of quantum theory, nor did he ever claim to have done so. On the contrary, until his untimely death in 1990, Bell was the prime proponent, and for much of this period almost the sole proponent, of the very theory, Bohmian mechanics, that he supposedly demolished.
Bohmian mechanics is of course as much a counterexample to the Kochen-Specker argument for the impossibility of hidden variables as it is to the one of von Neumann. It is obviously a counterexample to any such argument. However reasonable the assumptions of such an argument may be, some of them must fail for Bohmian mechanics.
Why is the idea that at the instant of human observation that crystallises one state of a probability of any number of states stupid?
It is because every part of the universe is constantly interacting with every other part – all parts of the universe are constantly ‘observing‘ all other parts.
It is a modern scientific equivalent of the remarkable self-taught scientist and philosopher Margaret Lucas Cavendish’s inanimate awareness of matter [1623-1673] – Margaret Lucas Cavendish – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
So it therefore follows that there cannot be any number of probable states of any particular aspect of the universe. It is a self-watching self-aware system in an inanimate sense.
Well and bravely said! I’ve hardly ever heard anyone bold enough to tell the truth about Einstein the Plagiarist Fraud.
FerdIII it is instructive that ‘science’ abandons theories prematurely.
The Michelson-Morley experiment was not conclusive, showing approximately 25% of the expected 30m/s speed of an “aether wind” from Earth orbiting the Sun.
This anomaly went ignored for a century and more.
As you say, the aether was abandoned it is said because of Special Relativity.
Einstein accepted a new version to explain parts of General Relativity.
Nobel prize winner the late Professor Maurice Allais and the late Dr Robert Latham [latterly of the Blackett Laboratories, Imperial College, London] collaborated on investigating the anomalies with much unpublished research held by The Allais Foundation in Paris.
Latham was ridiculed by his Imperial College colleagues as “still believing in the aether” whereas in fact he was one of the most talented constructors of sensitive measuring apparatus in the world and that was part of his contributions to Professor Allais’ work. In addition, he was doing what a scientist should – checking and investigating anomalies.
He has sadly passed without his contributions to scientific inquiry being recognised – whilst as we see from DS the truly dreadful Anthony Fauci is honoured by what seem IMHO to be the now highly political supporters of globalist policies at the Royal Society.
Can these fraudsters really expect to get donations from Dr Gates et al if they don’t honour Fauci and Mann.
They honoured that idiot quack Saint Edward Jenner of the Stabbinations. He murdered thousands with his smallpox quackcine poison. 3 days before he died he admitted in a letter that people were injured and dying and he was ‘beset with difficulties’. He always talked about ‘needing money’. £3 million transferred by HMG to Jennings and friends. Thus began criminal pharma.
So why not a criminal like Fauci. AIDS – Rona and much else. He just bought a $18 million estate on the Potomac – a payment as the world’s greatest drug salesmen. NIAID was out of business until Fauci and Gallo concocted the AIDS scam (which used the PCR test scam).
Royal Society – has not much to do with real science. Another useless self congratulating entity of preening empty headed peacocks and criminals.
Apologies for being Off Topic (although Fauci is partly and mainly responsible for pushing vaccines so maybe not).
This is very relevant to the “Obesity Epidemic” topic a few days ago but until now I couldn’t find the link :-
https://vinuarumugham.substack.com/p/obesity-and-diabetes-are-vaccine
As far as Fauci’s Honour goes, look no further than the likes of Sir Tony Blair and our expert epidemiologist Sir John Edmunds.
No comment really needed as to why the establishment do this.
Fwiw though I think they do it just to take the piss (out of us, not them).
It’s to reinforce the establishment.
Don’t call it an Obesity epidemic for God’s sake, next we will have the WHO telling us its a pandemic and we must all stop eating anything except Billy boys bugs and lab produced gloop that they call fake meat.
“We, the true Royal Apostles and Prophets of Science™ discern the anointing of power on these worthy brethren, Anthony Fauci and Michael Mann, and by the laying on of our hands we decree and declare that they too are Apostles of Science whose authority is to be accepted by all the people, or be under the curse. Lo, we have spoken.”
To remind us all of who’s in charge. A simple psychological game of confusion and demoralisation.
Morning fellow sufferers , your succinct comments so far have this back slapping debacle covered
, can I just add the vision of “AIDS inducing Fauci” when he appeared wearing 3 different patterned face masks ! He was definitely mocking us !!
And Tedros was given a honorary doctorate by the University of Glasgow…
I’ve posted this link before but in my humble opinion this is a useful perspective on Fauci and I’m sure the good people at the Royal Society have considered such evidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KziNZARsv1s&t=13s
Fauci & The Communists
Why?
Because they’re all part of the Globalist Clerisy.
The Royal Society has been taken over by the politically-correct, just like every other institution.
Drumpf MAGA worshippers will be glad their hero’s “Warp Speed” vaccination tsar has been duly honoured.
It’s all a political pose, as you suggest. Anything with the word ‘Royal’ in its title needs to be regarded with the utmost suspicion, anyway
Let’s hope they’ll be able to visit Fauci in prison
Visit? They should be in the next cell over.
RIP Royal Society