Bradford drivers are hardest hit by soaring cost of car insurance

One of the city’s MPs said there was a “desperate need to tackle this issue” after the average cost of comprehensive car insurance rose by 17.1 per cent in Bradford last year – well over the average 4.9 per cent increase across the country.

The average cost of a comprehensive policy at the end of 2011 stood at £844, according to the survey by cost comparison website Confused.com and professional services company Towers Watson.

“People are fed up and want to see an end to it,” said Bradford East Liberal Democrat MP David Ward, who has been campaigning to tackle soaring premiums.

Today’s survey, which revealed the average insurance premium for 17 to 20-year-olds at the end of last year was a hefty £2,590, comes as a committee of MPs today calls on the Government to impose a higher threshold for the payment of any compensation in whiplash cases.

MPs on the Transport Select Committee also called on the insurance industry to abandon sharp practices in the management of car accident claims.

The committee said the Government should establish a cross-departmental ministerial committee to look at reducing the cost of motor insurance.

Committee chairman Louise Ellman said whiplash claims were very costly for insurers to challenge and this was a type of injury “where diagnosis is often subjective”.

The committee said mounting personal injury claims were the main factor behind rising premiums. Ms Ellman added: “Although we strongly support access to justice, drivers should not be railroaded by cold callers into launching legal action.

“The insurance industry must abandon sharp practices that push up premiums such as passing drivers’ personal data to other parties or taking secretive referral fees from solicitors, garages and car hire firms.”

The committee said: “We recommend that the bar to receiving compensation in whiplash cases should be raised. If the number of whiplash claims does not fall significantly as a result there would, in our view, be a strong case to consider primary legislation to require objective evidence of a whiplash injury, or of the injury having a significant effect on the claimant’s life, before compensation was paid.”

Mr Ward said: “We have been campaigning hard on this issue since the summer, and I am delighted that the Transport Committee are looking into the reasons behind recent rises in premiums.

“Their report today makes some very constructive suggestions and I will be calling on the Government to implement these in full, alongside the actions which are already being taken such as banning referral fees.

“We have always said that there would be no quick fix to this – it is a complex problem which requires action across the whole of Government.”

Nick Starling, director of general insurance at the Association of British Insurers, said: “It is absolutely critical that Britain’s whiplash epidemic is tackled once and for all and the committee’s acknowledgement that the bar to receiving compensation for whiplash is too low is a step in the right direction.”