Oh dear, oh dear! All the good work done by HMG’s fierce determination to bring down motor insurance premiums by cracking down on shameless something-for-nothing scroungers spuriously claiming for whiplash and whatnot is being undone by Joe Public’s perverse insistence on buying fancy new cars with lots of expensive-to-fix parts, and by er… HMG’s decision in November to help itself to a larger serving of that oh-so-tempting IPT (Insurance Premium Tart).

A fresh survey by caparison site confusing.com and analists Towels What’s On has found that your average motorist is forking out an extra £78 today compared with twelve month previous. That’s a whooping 13.2% more, Readers, with an average fully comp premium now standing at a dizzying 6-7-2 squids.

Sobering news, Bankstone News is sure you will agree, and all the more reason to be glad the Saudis are currently giving oil away like it’s going out of fashion. Which it is, obviously.

The folks at confusing.com reckon a big chunk of the increase in premiums is down to rising repair costs caused by the fact that even bog standard motors these days are packed with fancy components that are fiendishly tricky to fix, if not so fiendishly tricky they need replacing not repairing. Another chunk is attributable to the government’s fierce determination to rake in some extra cash, anyway it can, including via the aforementioned hike in Insurance Pudding Tax.

The good news is these are almost certainly just blips. What are the chances of Geo. Osbourne coming back for more IPT any time soon? Surely not. And all these costly-to-repair components are probably going to make cars safer to drive or something, so insurers’ claims costs will come down and they’ll all get back to squabbling over who can bring those premiums down the fastest.

That’s when we’ll really start to see firm evidence of the dramatic premium reductions brought on by HMG’s War on Claims. The government has repeatedly assured us that insurers are committed to passing on the full 100% benefit of reduced costs arising from the final defeat of frivolous PI claims to customers – and is sure to make certain that they honour their pledge.

Why, just the other day Treasury Secretary Hatty Baldwin confirmed in Parliament that “The pricing of insurance products is a commercial matter for individual insurers in which the government does not seek to intervene.”

So there you have it, basically.

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