Victory for Mail as Motability fat cats ‘find spare £500m’

DISABLED drivers are £500million better off thanks to a daily Mail investigation.

Motability announced the massive donation yesterday after our reporting revealed the charitable scheme was hoarding £2.4billion of public cash.

its bosses had previously insisted there was no spare money – while pocketing lavish salaries themselves.

MPs, who have carried out their own inquiry, hailed the windfall and praised this newspaper’s ‘excellent’ journalism.

Motability arranges cars for disabled people in exchange for their state mobility allowance.

the Mail’s investigation revealed in February that the company has been amassing about £200million a year in unspent funds, resulting in ‘reserves’ of £2.4billion.

Motability insisted it needed all of the money as a cushion against business risks such as changes in car prices.

it also emerged that chief executive Mike Betts was on £1.7million a year. the revelations sparked three official inquiries, two of which are still ongoing. Yesterday the firm did not even wait for the results before partially caving in.

Motability operations, the firm which runs the scheme, announced £400million now and a further £100million next year would go to Motability the charity, which awards grants to help disabled motorists.

John Mann, a Labour member of the commons treasury committee, said: ‘disabled people are now a whopping £500million better off and it is thanks to an excellent newspaper investigation which was followed up by MPs forensi- cally demolishing all their nonsense excuses.’

Frank Field, the Labour chairman of the work and pensions committee, said: ‘this is a very good first payment, but it is only a fifth of their enormous pile of spare cash.

‘the reserves they are amassing could be put to better use, and it should be for Parliament to decide how best to spend it.’

a joint inquiry by the two parliamentary committees concluded that Motability was paying its bosses salaries ‘totally out of whack with reality’. the national audit office is also carrying out a review. Motability operations said its board had approved the donation ‘in anticipation of delivering a strong financial out-turn this year, the result of an excellent operating performance, and a windfall from the exceptionally buoyant used-car market’.

it added: ‘this donation is one of a series made over the past ten years. the scale of this payment has been made possible through strong operational and financial performance.’

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