Mr. Kenneth Fox:

I will comment further on mobility. As I said, approximately 2 million people in the UK get a mobility payment. Approximately one third of them convert that mobility payment into a lease payment. They are allowed to use the money to lease a vehicle through the motability scheme. That scheme probably represents the largest leasing company in Europe. We recently had a meeting with the people who run it. They lease 800 cars a day. It is a very large scheme. The UK Government allows the people who run the scheme to buy the cars VAT exempt, and they have huge negotiating power with the vehicle manufacturers, insurance companies and car maintenance companies. They lease the cars, fully insured and fully maintained, for a three-year period, after which the vehicles are taken back and put on the resale market.

Some 10% of the 700,000-plus cars used in the scheme are highly adapted, which means that many of the cars go back into the general market. Committee members may not realise that we depend to a huge extent on that supply of vehicles. A large number of the cars we see coming through the various suppliers are vehicles coming off the motability scheme in the UK that have finished lease, finished lease early or were handed back for various reasons. They go onto the general sale market and end up here. Many of the not-new vehicles with lowered floors, wheelchair accessibility and various adaptations that are on the market here are second-hand or out-of-lease cars coming from the UK. They are a big factor in our supply because we do not have the infrastructure to build those cars in a mass way here. We just do not have the population. We are depending on that supply.

Brexit has not been great for us in terms of access to this source of low-cost supply. Previously, that access meant people did not have to go for new vehicles and could, instead, get a fairly good vehicle at a reduced cost from the UK. It is a big factor for us in terms of supply. As I outlined, the payment can be converted and may be supplemented if more is needed to purchase a vehicle. There is also an equalisation process under the scheme whereby the people with a lower adaptation need contribute in a way that equalises the contribution required from those with a higher adaptation need. Everybody pays the same amount as a result of that equalisation factor. There are big numbers involved in the scheme and the people running it are allowed to do that. The possibility of an arrangement being reached with them is probably more difficult in the current political circumstances, but that is how it works.