Scrappage scheme for old cars.

[fungus]

I have just read this on the ABD web site. Do members think it is a good scheme, or like the ABD think it would cost British jobs and cost the poorest motorist the most?

Scrappage Scheme Would Export Jobs
Remove High Taxes on New Cars to Stimulate Sales
The ABD today called on the government to ignore calls for a vehicle scrappage scheme, and put forward its own plan for stimulating the car trade.

The scrappage scheme, in which owners who scrap older cars receive a voucher which entitles them to a discount (£2,000 has been suggested) is being pushed by sections of the motor trade in the hope of boosting sales of new cars. However, the ABD believes that overall the scheme will be bad for jobs and the economy, will be bad for road safety and, contrary to popular belief, of no benefit to the environment.

"The scrappage scheme may stimulate the sale of new cars" explained ABD Chairman Brian Gregory, "But how will that benefit the British economy if those cars are built in France or Malaysia? It would be much better for the economy as a whole to keep older cars on the road — people have their cars repaired at a local garage, they don't send them abroad for service. With the repair industry employing around 600,000 people 1 it makes sense to protect their jobs rather than import more cars and export more jobs."

Scrappage will be bad for road safety. As pointed out by Classic Car Weekly 2, the people who will be able to take advantage of the scrappage scheme will be the better off — lower income families won't be able to afford a new car, even with the scrappage discount. The better off owners, who will benefit from this scheme, will generally be running superior examples of older cars which are properly maintained. Scrappage will mean that it will be the better, safer, older vehicles which will be scrapped, and not the genuine bangers. This will lead to a shortage of good standard older cars, leading to more bodged up bangers running around and pricing some drivers off the road altogether.

Scrappage is claimed to have environmental benefits, but these are ridiculed by green groups. The ABD, of course, disagrees with the green lobby over the relationship between carbon dioxide and global climate, but agrees with the Green Party's spokesperson on Sustainable Development, Professor John Whitelegg, when he says that "Scrapping a perfectly good car is an outrageous thing to do" 3, and a spokesman for the Environmental Transport Association who said "Car scrappage schemes ... have very little to do with the environment, and to suggest otherwise is misleading" 4. The ABD even finds itself in the rare position of agreeing with environmental writer George Monbiot when he said "It would make more sense for the government to pay us to keep our old bangers on the road" 5.


If the government does want to stimulate new car sales, the ABD has some suggestions:
Scrap the high rates of Vehicle Excise Duty planned on new cars, which penalise the higher end models which are the only cars which it is economic to build in Britain. Taxes of up to £950 (first year) and £455 (subsequent years) are meant to be punitive, and it's disingenuous for the government to hand out a grant for the destruction of a perfectly serviceable car just so the buyer can pay more tax on the new one. VED is supposed to be a fixed charge for using the road network, turning it into an incentive to buy city runabouts defeats its intended purpose.
Make the Vehicle Excise Duty free for the first three years of the car's life for a limited period. As well as making new cars more attractive to buyers it would spread the cost to the government over the three years instead of it all being paid in one go as a scrappage allowance.
The ABD believes that such policies would benefit British jobs, as well as helping to keep the cost of older cars down, allowing struggling low income families to sensibly upgrade cars which have reached the end of their useful lives.

Oppinions please.

Nigel ADI
IAM trainee observer

[MiniClubmanEstate]

The whole scheme seems to be designed to destroy our motoring heritage whilst causing significant environmental damage. Destroying cars to replace them with new cars cannot be done without causing significant environmental damage, my car over 30 years old has not needed to be replaced 3 times which means 3 less catalytic converters which cause significant environmental damage when ever materials for them are mined, 3 less steel body-shells remembering that recycling is not as efficient compared to using what is still usable and thats not to mention 3 times the manufacturing the parts so make the whole car work.
Now, modern cars are unnecessarily large to carry the same capacity of an older car, use more fuel due to inefficient tuning to comply with emissions regulations hence we need to use more natural resources to make more fuel for the same journeys, modern cars are usually heavy due to safety regulations so that they can be crashed whilst protecting the precious unskilled driver which again means more fuel to haul the extra weight along.
Now if emissions regulations were relaxed with the current ECU technology we could get perhaps twice the fuel economy from a new car remembering that at the current rate we only have 50 years of oil left, and if we focused on driver education it would not be necessary to design cars to be crashed resulting in lighter cars with less metal. Another idea would be to promote the use of alternative materials for car manufacturing such as stainless steel, aluminum, fiberglass and kevlar which would result in cars lasting for many decades without body-shells corroding which is the cause for most scrapping.

I now must look at the positive side that more cars will need to be manufactured which means more jobs and boosted economy, although thats little comfort to the wildlife and natural resources which must be destroyed to kep our economy running. ** edit - Actually that paragraph may have no basis in fact.

Andrew Read
Proud owner of a 31 year old highly economical and environmentally friendly Mini Clubman Estate which will never be scrapped.

[fungus]

My wifes Peugeot 306 HDI estate is comming up 9 years old. Has 60000 on the clock. Returns a reasonable mpg. Is cheap to run. Practical. Has not had to have any major repairs yet, although the front struts are showing signs of leaking. I've been told it is not an expensive repair. The bodywork has a few scratches, some of which were there when we bought the car at 3 years old with 20000 on the clock. There is no corosion, apart from a bit on the exhaust. The battery is original, and shows no apparent signs of giving up. The mechanics are generaly sound. Why would we want to scrap it? It should have a good few years life left in it yet.

Nigel ADI
IAM trainee observer

[7db]

Why would I, as a tax payer, want to help people to buy assets?

Do I get some part ownership of the companies that this supports? Do I buy into the dinosaur industries and their fat cat directors?

Or couldn't the Govt just f*ck off and let me keep my money rather than spending it on hair brained schemes.

[Octy_Ross]

I'm off out to buy a scrapper to put towards a nice shiny new one !!

[Jonathan]

I'm wondering if it might have been a better idea to introduce a scrappage scheme for old, life-expired governments - say, over 10 years old and generating too many harmful emissions?

[waremark]

Glad to find I am not alone in thinking this scheme hair-brained. I agree that it will result in scrapping perfectly decent cars, which will be environmentally damaging, and that any new cars bought under the scheme will be imported. The one bit of good news is that the scheme is unlikely to be very effective. The new car discount is only going to be available to existing owners of 10 year old cars (you have to have owned the old car for a year, and the scheme only lasts until next March, so it is no good going out to buy an old banger now). And it does not seem likely that many owners of low value 10 year old cars (as opposed to prized classics) will be in the market for new cars even at £2,000 off.

By the way, £2,000 off is less than you can get off quite a modest new car at the moment; I wonder whether the scheme discount will come off the lowest prices available now, or whether it will be a case of taxpayers subsidising a discount which is already available.

[kfae8959]

Sources close to the Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs tell me that this is a scheme suggested by the motor industry - claiming it would promote uptake of "more efficient" vehicles - but that it was resisted when the approach was first made. I'm sorry that the Chancellor hasn't been able to resist the pressure from the motor industry altogether, but pleased he has not acquiesced entirely! I'd very much like to see a thorough life-cycle analysis done for cars, just like that which is in progress for other "household" consumer products.

[Porker]

I'm with those who are against the scheme.

In Germany, they at least have a domestic car manufacturing industry, which the UK doesn't. At least, any cars manufactured in the UK will be made by non-UK-owned companies and the profits from doing so will be repatriated.

The scheme can only, at best, bring some purchases forward which will leave a relative dearth of those sales in a year or two. Equally, I suspect that dealers will use the knowledge of someone having a voucher as a reason to restrict disounts. They're already saying that used cars are more valuable (when selling them) because there's a "shortage of stock".

This feels like a sop to the motor industry - in effect a jobs subsidy - which will, in my view, be an inefficient waste of tax money.

regards
P.

[Porker]

Chris

I agree with the sentiment (in the short term, at least) but this is a desperately inefficient way of doing it.

P.

[jont]

Do we think cars bought under the scrappage scheme will actually be new (as in yet to be manufactured) vs having been sat in the docks/on an airfield for the past 6 months? I'm not sure how clearing the backlog of cars built but not yet registered is going to help save any jobs.

[MGF]

The scheme does seem a bit clumsy to me and I don't buy the eco benefits of it but the proof will be in the pudding.

This feels like a sop to the motor industry - in effect a jobs subsidy - which will, in my view, be an inefficient waste of tax money.

regards
P.

It is unashemedly a jobs subsidy. The motor industry provides many thousands of decent jobs. If we lose these through the recession what chance do we have to get them back subsequently? Using taxpayers money to pay for these people to be unemployed is a much greater waste of tax payer's money.

We can no longer rely on the UK being the low-wage economy of Europe to attract investment as we cannot compete on wages with Eastern Europe.

There is the risk of some of the discount being absorbed by the dealers but the industry itself is financing half of the scheme.

Do we think cars bought under the scrappage scheme will actually be new (as in yet to be manufactured) vs having been sat in the docks/on an airfield for the past 6 months? I'm not sure how clearing the backlog of cars built but not yet registered is going to help save any jobs.

Because the point at which production needs to be restarted will be brought forward?

[Sru_1980]

My wifes Peugeot 306 HDI estate is comming up 9 years old. Has 60000 on the clock. Returns a reasonable mpg. Is cheap to run. Practical. Has not had to have any major repairs yet, although the front struts are showing signs of leaking. I've been told it is not an expensive repair. The bodywork has a few scratches, some of which were there when we bought the car at 3 years old with 20000 on the clock. There is no corosion, apart from a bit on the exhaust. The battery is original, and shows no apparent signs of giving up. The mechanics are generaly sound. Why would we want to scrap it? It should have a good few years life left in it yet.

Nigel ADI
IAM trainee observer

Mine too! My Corsa is 15 years old this year, and I average about 16,000 miles a year in it - it's had to have some repairs done to it, of course, but it's still a perfectly good car - I certainly won't be scrapping it!

[waremark]

What small cheap cars are built in the uk? I can only think of the Micra. I cannot see this scheme helping uk manufacturing at all, and presumably it will damage jobs in the repairs and spares businesses.

[Barnaby]

The whole scheme seems to be designed to destroy our motoring heritage whilst causing significant environmental damage. Destroying cars to replace them with new cars cannot be done without causing significant environmental damage, my car over 30 years old has not needed to be replaced 3 times which means 3 less catalytic converters which cause significant environmental damage when ever materials for them are mined, 3 less steel body-shells remembering that recycling is not as efficient compared to using what is still usable and thats not to mention 3 times the manufacturing the parts so make the whole car work.
...
Proud owner of a 31 year old highly economical and environmentally friendly Mini Clubman Estate which will never be scrapped.

But there has been 3 replacement subframes, 3 pairs of wings, 6 new cills (all welded on top the last), and an engine change or two

I do agree with the comments btw, its the 10 year old cars that i'm looking for as decent runarounds, with scrappage there will be less of those around and owners probably wanting more for them...

Cheers
Barnaby