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A decade ago, Rachel Reeves was pictured with a disabled constituent, congratulating him on being given the “keys to freedom” afforded by a Motability vehicle.
Since then, Reeves – now Britain’s chancellor – has barely mentioned the scheme that leases 300,000 cars a year to people with mobility problems, aside from criticising Tory cuts affecting its users.
Nor did it crop up in Labour’s manifesto, which promised to put disabled people’s “views and voices at the heart of all we do”.
But late last year, the idea that Motability was offering disabled people “free” BMWs and Mercedes became a repeated rightwing talking point fuelled by social media accounts on Elon Musk’s X.
In fact, the cars are funded by people’s disability benefit payments, topped up with their own contributions.
From there, articles began to spring up in the tabloid press reproducing social media memes calling for Motability vehicles to be made more ugly, and the furore spread to the speeches of Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage – and, finally, grabbed the attention of the Treasury.
At the budget, Reeves for the first time publicly identified the programme as a problem, saying it “was set up to protect the most vulnerable, not to subsidise the lease on a Mercedes-Benz”.
Without prior consultation and with just a line of explanation in parliament, the scheme was the target of the only significant welfare cuts in the budget as £300m a year of tax breaks were ended and premium brands removed by the scheme operator.
The plans involve imposing an insurance premium tax and charging VAT on advance payments for higher-value cars.
The first hint that Motability could become a target of the Treasury emerged publicly in October in a front page article in the Times, which predicted that Reeves could seek to save up to £1bn from ending VAT breaks across the scheme.
It was a month after Badenoch, the Tory leader, pledged to “restrict Motability vehicles to people with serious disabilities”, telling the party’s conference: “Those cars are not for people with ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder].”
At around the same time, Lee Anderson, the Reform spokesperson on welfare, called Motability an “absolute scandal” and claimed: “I remember back in the day if you were on disability and you wanted a car from the state it was a blue three-wheeler. What’s wrong with that? Let’s go back to that.”
Treasury insiders insist that civil servants had long identified Motability as a scheme that needed to be rebalanced, and that the public felt it was unfair for luxury vehicles to be subsidised.
And it was indeed the Treasury, rather than the Department for Work and Pensions, that was primarily pushing for changes to be made, working up proposals over several months.
Originally, the Times story suggested, the government appeared to favour a more drastic option of making £1bn of savings primarily by putting VAT on the scheme’s sales of Motability vehicles at the end of the lease period – but sources say this was abandoned after ministers were given warnings by the operator that the whole programme could collapse. Treasury insiders dispute that that figure was ever on the table.
Government insiders also dispute that Treasury ministers had any idea that rightwing X accounts were running a campaign against Motability or that it had any influence over their decision-making.
But other Whitehall sources say it is “not true” that the Treasury was unaware of pressure from the right to take action, and that Motability was seen as an easy target to “get a win on welfare” after the collapse of Labour’s disability benefit cuts.
There are, certainly, few in Westminster who are unaware of the memes and data being pumped out on social media to undermine the scheme, primarily the anonymous Max Tempers account and the Motability Check website, which allowed people to ask whether any number plate was likely to be a Motability car or not.
The website, taken down since the budget, was accused of fuelling hostility against disabled people in real life, and was said by experts to rely on dubious data.
From there, newspapers such as the Telegraph and Mail picked up the baton. The main line of attack was that claimants were allowed to make higher payments to get premium brands such as Mercedes or BMW, which critics said fuelled demand for the scheme among people with conditions that did not visibly impair mobility, such as ADHD or anxiety – a minority of claimants.
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There were even misleading claims that people who suffer from bed-wetting (enuresis) and Munchausen syndrome were routinely getting the cars on the basis of those conditions alone.
Jill Rutter, a former Downing Street civil servant who is now a senior fellow at the Institute for Government, said there are a “whole range of ways in which issues get into the ‘noticing process’ – how one policy issue gets attention as opposed to all the multitude of other ones”.
“If there’s a buzz around, you might think: there’s a lot of grief from the rightwing press for being weak on welfare, is this something that’s going to affect our people, is this going to save a bit of money, and is this wrong in its own terms? That’s the sort of thing that happens.
“What you don’t want is someone to just react instantly to what they see on social media, partly because lots of it is junk or distorted. But it’s not bad to pick up ideas from lots of places. Political parties don’t have a monopoly on suitable cases for attention.”
A government spokesperson said that officials had engaged extensively with the Motability Foundation to understand the potential impacts of any changes, and noted that “Motability customers will still be able to lease a car with just their qualifying disability benefit, as there will still be cars available through the scheme which require no advance payment”.
They added: “As well as ensuring disabled people can access vehicles, we’re also committed to reforming Motability and saving the taxpayer £1bn over five years.”
However, disabled groups say there was no consultation with them from the government, and they would have pointed out that many bigger and more premium cars are more suitable for severely disabled users.
“For example, you need a solid-built car to be able to take the heft of a wheelchair hoist,” said Cat Whitehouse, co-chief executive of the Transport for All group, which coordinated a letter by 40 disability organisations warning against Motability cuts.
“It is great when politicians listen to the views of society, but when they’re pushing the rhetoric of the rightwing populist press and social media, rather than listening to all of society, then we have a problem,” she said.
Whitehouse also said the changes would make life more expensive and difficult for many disabled people, pricing some out of using a car, highlighting a saying in the policymaking world that “if you’re not at the table, you’re probably for lunch”.
As for Reeves, she appears comfortable with her decision on Motability.
Asked on Friday if the changes were made as a result of online rightwing talking points, she told the Guardian: “Not at all. And actually it’s been welcomed by people, these changes. We do need to make sure the system works properly and protect the integrity of it.”
