Mike Rutherford's column

	The Government is pretending motoring is cheaper than it is in an effort to make drivers think that they're not being ripped off

If somebody told you that the occupants of a typical British home spend £6 a day purchasing, owning and running their new car, you’d probably laugh out loud. It’s the sort of figure an iffy dealer might use to flog you a motor you can’t afford. Or maybe it’s a dodgy boss, who’s arguing that since your privately owned motor costs you a mere six quid every 24 hours, you shouldn’t claim 40p-a-mile expenses when driving on company business. But the fact is, it’s not unscrupulous car traders or ruthless employers pretending that the daily cost of motoring is now about the same as two mugs of Starbucks coffee. It’s the Government-funded Office of National Statistics.

A few days ago, the ONS published hundreds of pages of absurdly complicated and utterly useless data including – wait for it – what Brits
spend on their sugar and spuds. Who cares? It’s irrelevant. But tucked away in the depths of the super-heavyweight document is a section that refers to motoring and public transport costs. According to ONS, the “average weekly transport expenditure for all households” is £62. That’s not per person, you have to understand, it’s per house or flat. Sounds fair, doesn’t it?

At least it does until you analyse the breakdown, which suggests that over a week Mr and Mrs Average, plus their children collectively, spend a total of only £8.60 on trains, buses, coaches, planes, ferries, taxis and other hire vehicles. The idea that a family, couple, or even a single person, can get away with spending just over a quid a day on some or all of those modes of transport is absurd, isn’t it?

Equally nonsensical is the suggestion from ONS statisticians that a car costs that same “average” British household roughly £43 a week. Not that they speak in such straightforward terms. Instead, they bury figures in overly complicated lists. But I’ve spent days wading through them, and can reveal that the ONS, accidentally or otherwise, effectively concludes that the average new car costs the same household only £8.30 a week in outright vehicle purchase costs.

Then comes 30p for accessories, £1.50 in spare parts and £14.50 for petrol. Oil costs 10p a week, repairs/servicing/other work £5.80, motoring organisation subscription 50p, garaging/car washing 70p, parking

fees/tolls/permits 80p, anti-freeze/cleaning materials 10p, insurance £7.90 and a tax disc £2.75. Give or take, that totals £43.25 a week, which equates to only £6.18 a day.

Frankly, I find these hard-to -find, motoring-related figures impossible to believe. In parts of London, for example, £6 wouldn’t cover the cost of parking for an hour or pay the congestion charge. Six quid will buy you a single ticket to travel between two tube stops on the capital’s underground, but it’s not enough to buy two tickets, as they’re £4 each. I can only assume that the Government, via the ONS, is pretending that motoring is cheaper than it is in an attempt to make drivers think that they’re not being ripped off. But we are. And most of the rip-offs are Government-inspired, whether we’re talking VAT on vehicles/fuel/servicing/repairs; toll fees to use certain roads and bridges; road fund licences; congestion charging; state-sponsored parking scams; insurance taxes or expensive bureaucracy, such as vehicle registration fees.

Don’t kid yourself that the ownership, usage and administration of a car typically costs the average home and family only £6 daily. Countless millions of motorists are spending that – and more – every single day on car-related taxes alone.