By Sarah Neville, Alistair Gray and Robert Cookson
Motorists could see their annual insurance premiums fall £15 under government plans to put all driving records online as the government continues its push to make Britain the most “digital” country in the G8.
Under the scheme, called MyLicence, drivers will be able to view their driving history via the internet, while insurers and car hire companies will also be able to satisfy themselves they have accurate information about applicants for their services.
The scheme is the latest development in the government’s push to move services online as it seeks to dramatically reduce the size of the civil service while improving services for consumers.
Francis Maude, cabinet office minister, said insurers currently priced in a “risk premium” to cover themselves against drivers who understated the number of points they had accumulated on their licences.
He said that under the new system, expected to go fully live in June, drivers would be able to provide their driving licence number when applying for insurance, so insurers could check their data “and provide much more accurate quotations because they will not have to take anything on trust”.
The Association of British Insurers has estimated that for the “honest” motorist, the potential savings from having this data available could be up to £15 on their premium, said the Cabinet Office.
Insurance companies, which complain that they struggle to verify efficiently even basic details about policy holders, welcomed the announcement.
At present, some insurers request copies of prospective policy holders’ paper licences to check information. However, they complain the process is burdensome and the associated costs prevent many from properly scrutinising the records of all applicants. Paper licences will be phased out by 2015, Mr Maude confirmed.
David Williams, director of underwriting at Axa, said: “It’s not just about points [on licences]. It’s also about confirming who [the prospective policy holders] are, live where they say they live, and their age.”
Aviva said: “Measures such as this that reduce the cost of fraud for the benefit of honest customers can only be a good thing.”
Meanwhile, Mr Maude sought to play down a report in the Guardian, which quoted leaked minutes from a meeting of the government’s universal credit board to suggest the government digital service (GDS) had pulled its team of experts out of the department for work and pensions. It said the DWP was looking for new IT specialists to keep universal credit on track amid tensions with the Cabinet Office.
Mr Maude said that, while his department had put “a lot of resource” into helping to fix initial problems with the universal credit IT, “the expectation always is that at some point the in-house team takes over and the transition was very clearly agreed between the Cabinet Office and DWP”.
Mike Bracken, director of the GDS, said he had agreed the timing of the pullout with Kevin Cunnington, newly appointed as DWP’s director-general of digital transformation. “He is quite happy with it and so am I, so I don’t know what this nonsense is all about,” he said. The government was looking to hire skilled IT workers “all around government and DWP is no different”, he said.
The DWP said the meeting referred to in the Guardian story had taken place before the December announcement of the new timetable for UC, under which most claimants will be transferred to the scheme by the original end date of 2017 but around 700,000 incapacity benefit claimants will not move over until later.