You raise a very interesting point, my mother has full disability allowance although has refused her option of a motability car as she prefers to own the vehicle herself knowing no lease will ever run down and it be taken off her. She does make use of her free VED though. I have relatives who work/have worked in such a field (job centres etc) before and a current-ex-sort of girlfriend (dont ask, better not to) who works in social services so i often hear about the changes in such fields.

The changes to the medicals and examination process is particularly startling, the fact a huge fee is paid to a private healthcare company to meet contractual targets has led to genuinely ill people being declared fit due to an obvious conflict of interest . The example you mention is true, say if someone can walk with a prosthetic limb perfectly fine as all the rest of us then they will not qualify, and havent qualified for it for quite some time actually despite what the media say. But i dont want to get into a political debate about this so i'll leave it there.

Obviously the only people going to qualify are those like my mother who simply cannot walk more than 30 yards without serious pain and would literally be housebound without a car.

You're right this could end up flooding the market hugely, alot of dealers depend on this scheme to shift certain cars too (watch the Fusion get dropped if motability takes a hit) as with the money from the Government you're essentially able to take a new car on a three year lease for an up front fee which can range depending on what car it is (some are free but have manual gearboxes, huge oversight) and the dealer takes care of servicing and basically all costs except the fuel as im sure you all know. But i know people who have paid over £7000 to procure their motability car which they have to give back after three years, they couldve bought an ultra reliable Japanese runaround for about a grand and kept it in the first place with free Tax on it.

But rather than look at 'flooded market' this could present openings for dealers, specifically second hand ones like supermarkets etc if it was me i'd be offering some sort of motability disabled discount on 0% APR finance offering similar benefits but they keep the car at the end of it, might barely break even but think of the positive publicity and increased reputation of your business! Bargain for business rates reduction due to taking a chunk of a problem off the Governments hands etc theres all sorts i'd be trying LOL!

I also think the Government should be looking at some form of Fuel Duty rebate for people entitled to disability benefit, i know the DLA is designed to enable a disabled person to buy things they need to live more comfortably but transport is never taken into account in such a thing.

I am so glad and privileged not to be disabled (yet!) that personally I'm glad if some of the tax I pay goes towards giving disabled people all the help they need. Far better that than some of the things it's been spent on in the past - Iraq springs to mind.

It would be easy to say 'give them all Nissan Micras' but - although that's a great advance over the old standard-issue invalid car - people have different disabilities and not all can get into a Micra-sized car.