Parliament debated on Monday an online petition that proposes a cap of £1,200 on car insurance for 18 to 25 year olds.
Lawmakers tackled the petition started by Suffolk teenage driver Rhys Parker after it garnered 185,175 signatures. For his first year of driving, the youngster said he was quoted £2,500, which he said was “completely unaffordable.”
Parker also told the BBC: “I think it's ridiculous. Young people just don’t get the help they need.”
Steve Double, the Conservative MP for St Austell and Newquay, opened the debate, according to the news network.
“I don’t support the cap, but I do think we should be doing more to help young people,” the BBC quoted Double as saying.
Double said capping premiums for young drivers “would defy the logic of risk that the insurer is taking” and “would surely simply result in other groups having to pay more than they should.”
“It also fails to deal with the cause which is that novice drivers have a worse accident record than any other group, far worse,” Double was also quoted as saying by the Daily Record.
“If we want to deal with the fruit of high premiums we must deal with the root cause,” he added. “Capping premiums will not stop the accidents.”
Responding to the petition, the Department for Transport (DfT) said that the whiplash reforms recently announced by the government “will end the cycle” in which motorists pay higher insurance premiums due to fraudulent claims.
“The government fully expects insurers to pass on the savings from these reforms to consumers through lower premiums and leading insurers have already committed to do this,” the DfT said.
The department also advised customers to shop around for the best possible deal before making an insurance purchase. It further urged consumers to buy from insurers that have introduced the use of telematics or in-car black boxes to allow better risk-based pricing for new drivers.
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