Car Insurance. A Question

I was driving along last night and one of those adverts came on the radio about driving without insurance.

You know one of those government adverts that along with The Energy Saving Trust et. al. seem to be propping up commercial radio and TV.

It was all about fines , illegal, blah blah blah. we will catch you, we have eyes everywhere, crush your car . all real Big Brother stuff.

Then Mr Puddlecoat posted about The AA advising that a Postal Strike will be no excuse for not having paid or proof of having paid your Vehicle Excise Duty and/or Car Insurance and directed me to www.askMID.com and they remind me that.

Right now, we want to help you learn more about the value and social importance of insurance, particularly as you may be one of the many people looking at ways to cut back on your spending because of the recession.

Driving without insurance is a criminal offence. Hundreds of thousands of people are convicted every year for taking to the road without a valid insurance policy. The police seize about 500 uninsured vehicles every day. You can’t afford not to … Stay Insured.

Now, my question is this (and I’ve asked people before, to no answer)

How did it come about that not having Car Insurance is a Criminal Offence? Subject to very stringent penalties, it is enforced by the State* costing I would imagine millions in admin per year.

Yet the only way you can get this insurance is to buy it from a private company.

A private company that exists for the profit of it’s shareholders, who are definately not you, with no restrictions on what they can charge. They can take a hit elsewhere, then up the premiums for the car driver, after all its ILLEGAL not to have car insurance, you have to come to them.

Yes, there is sort of a market and you can shop around, but only normally for a couple of hundred quid. Add on top that, they will squeal like stuck pigs and wriggle every which way to avoid paying out if you actually try to claim, it seems a nice little earner. (and also they can refuse to insure you, by pricing you out of the market, a friend was recently quoted £2000 Third Party F&T for her 18 year old son for a £500 car)

"What does the State get out of this?" You ask. Well if you look at the small print on your policy you will find something called IPT, that stands for Insurance Premium Tax and it’s 5% , so if your policy is £500.00 you pay £525.00. Twenty five quid to the State. Nice.

And that’s on all insurance premiums , travel, home, medical, buildings etc. any time you take out an insurance the State adds 5% IPT. Did you know that? I confess until I worked for a company that offered insurance as part of it’s service package, I didn’t.

But I digress. So can somebody tell me, when was the deal done between the insurance industry and the State with regard to car insurance? Was it because the State was not ready or equipped to cope?. Were there shady deals done in back rooms? Whichever it was, the State and the insurance industry have done pretty well out of it. I can't think of another private industry that has the State policing it's revenue stream. It was good deal however it came about (obviously not for us though).

I am not in favour of the State interfering in peoples lives, but given the seemingly huge amount of uninsured drivers (for whatever reason) perhaps we should look to at least 3rd party being included in fuel prices, even 18 year olds and pikeys have to buy petrol (and not forgetting Motorists Of No Appearence).

Anything extra; fire, theft, fully comprehensive, people can then go to the insurance companies, and pay what the meerkat dictates, IF THEY WANT TO . The State can drop the IPT and charge VAT, if they bleat, fuck ’em. Simples

Otherwise we should all go for Romanian Pikey Insurance

* I'm using State rather than government, as no one has actually from whatever political party in government has ever addressed or tried to change this, they are all as bad as each other and are just the State.

*.