I know my TV career's over & I fear for my financial future, says wallowing Gregg Wallace as he moans about BBC sacking
Asked if he will tune in to the latest series which he co-presented, he said: 'No, no, no, no.'
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The 60-year-old — fired this month after an investigation into his behaviour — added: 'I'm hurt. I don't want anything to do with telly. I don't want anything to do with the BBC.'
The BBC confirmed it will air the series with Wallace and co-host John Torode, who was also sacked.
Defiant Wallace has hit back at the damning legal investigation into his behaviour — claiming HE was groped during his time on MasterChef.
The furious 60-year-old ex-presenter, fired this month, also believes he was accused of wrongdoing by women with an 'agenda' against him.
In a hard-hitting interview, he acknowledges he will never appear on TV again - and says he will not watch the new series of the show in which he features alongside axed co-host John Torode.
He says: 'The whole complaints procedure needs to be readdressed - there are huge problems with it as things stand.
'Being on MasterChef was brilliant but I had so many bad experiences on that show too.
'Had I wanted to raise any complaints, I'd have had the decency to speak to that person directly. Privately, not publicly.
'My God, can you imagine the complaints I could have made? Have you got any idea of the sexual references made to me on a daily basis?
'How many times I've been touched by women wanting a selfie? How many times I've been groped? How many times suggestive comments have been made to me? How many female contestants have said inappropriate things on MasterChef?
Shamed Gregg Wallace says 'I'm no groper, sex pest or flasher,' as tearful star refuses to accept blame for BBC sacking
'It wouldn't even cross my mind though. Now, I'm not suggesting that groping is right, but it was happening to me on a regular basis. It was just extraordinary.
'This is what I mean about the idea that presenters are god-like and they're just throwing their weight around and bullying people.
'The amount of times when I was desperately trying to build a career in television that I've been shouted at and bullied. I don't know what the answer is, and I understand the need for anonymity, but I wouldn't wish anyone to be dragged through what I have.'
While he recognises that genuine whistleblowers must be protected, he firmly believes some women were 'weaponising' their dislike of him.
He is, it is clear, a very angry man - and certainly a bruised one.
He told The Sun yesterday that he was not a 'groper, a sex pest or a flasher'. He also backed Torode, who had an allegation of racism upheld against him during the probe into Wallace's behaviour.
Wallace told The Sun: 'He is not a racist.'
He confirms he is contemplating suing the BBC — after taking on attack-dog lawyer Dan Morrison — for what he believes is their 'unfair' treatment of him.
Under the 2010 Equalities Act, employers are duty-bound to protect those with disabilities - which includes autism, a condition he was formally diagnosed with in January.
He sighs: 'Honestly I don't know if I will go through with it right now though. I feel utterly battered and bruised, and right now just want to hide behind my sofa drinking Horlicks.
'Perhaps when the dust has settled but it's too early to say what I will do next.' Last week the BBC and MasterChef production company Banijay confirmed they will be airing the series which he and Torode filmed last year.
Will Wallace be watching?
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He rages: 'No, no, no, no. I'm hurt. I don't want anything to do with telly. I don't want anything to do with the BBC. I really don't care. I'm just really pleased for the contestants because MasterChef, really, is all about them - it was never about John and I.
'Whoever hosts it next, and I really don't care who it is, the show will be absolutely fine.' Speaking from his sprawling country home in rural Kent, Wallace admits he is worried about his financial future.
He adds: 'But, for a long time, I earned a lot of money and I was careful with it. I am not expecting sympathy from anyone but obviously I have a family, and of course I do worry.'
He accepts his TV career is over, and has just qualified as a personal trainer helping men over 50 get fit.
He charges £50 a week for his 20 clients, giving them a one-hour, face-to-face online session plus a full nutrition and exercise plan.
It is a far cry from his reported £400,000-a-year salary on MasterChef. But, he insists, it brings him happiness. Today, the gym is a respite for him.
In 2022 the former greengrocer was awarded an MBE for services to food and charity.
But in the wake of the report against him - undertaken by law firm Lewis Silkin with 45 out of 83 allegations upheld - he fears being stripped of the title.
He muses: 'What will my legacy be now? I don't want it to be telly, I want nothing to do with it all. I have worried about losing my MBE but there's not a lot I can do about it. But I haven't done anything illegal and hopefully now more and more people will realise that I haven't been exposing myself, and I haven't been groping people either.
'So now I want to start campaigning - raising more awareness of neurodiversity in the workplace.
'I think perceptions may slowly change and all I want is people to ask questions of people whose behaviour they find odd - even people that might look like a football hooligan to you.
'You can't decide which groups of people or which disabilities you will support or won't support in the workplace. You either embrace it all or you don't.
'For example, the BBC should have spotted my autism sooner and sent me off to Occupational Health rather than letting all these complaints to build up against me, with nobody saying anything until the floodgates opened and it all came out. I feel very angry about that.'
Wallace is so angry with the BBC that when they asked him repeatedly for an interview he declined.
Anger, of course, is something many, many women felt towards Wallace in the wake of his arrogantly foolish comments on Instagram last year in which he said he was accused by 'middle-class women of a certain age'.
It is, he acknowledges ruefully, a phrase that will haunt him forever.
No, no, no, why did I look like an a**hole? He was asking me to do something, and he got my name wrong. Did I say anywhere that I wouldn't help him?
Gregg Wallace
After spending two hours with Wallace, it seems evident he is on the spectrum. Frankly, how it took until the age of 60 for him to be diagnosed is baffling.
One incident that has unquestionably marked him came in 2012 when a fan tweeted the presenter to ask for help raising awareness of a charity bike ride.
Nick Holder posted: 'Hi Greg, I am cycling just over 180 miles in 2 days for Macmillan Cancer Support. Any chance of an RT?' Instead of supporting Nick's endeavours, Gregg, with two Gs, simply responded 'Gregg?'
Cuttingly - and quite rightly - Nick replied: 'No worries mate, it's only people with cancer. You worry about your extra G. Mastert**t.'
The exchange quickly went viral, with Wallace mercilessly ridiculed.
Does he not realise, I ask, that he came across as, well, an utter a**hole? (A question not many people would take well.)
Nope, Gregg is still bemused and frustrated by the incident.
He asks: 'No, no, no, why did I look like an a**hole? He was asking me to do something, and he got my name wrong. Did I say anywhere that I wouldn't help him?
'So why didn't he just go, 'Oh, OK mate, sorry I got that wrong. Would you help me?'
'And if that would have been the narrative, then fine, but instead he said, 'Oh, don't worry, it's only people dying of cancer, you get your name right, w***er'.
'If only he'd just said, 'Oh, sorry, mate, G-R-E-G-G, could you help me?' Then of course I would have done so, that's what I wanted to do, but people don't know that. I have done so much for charities over the years, I have always done so.'
When I ask him if such pedantry is his autism at play, he bizarrely doubles down and insists I would not understand because people have not been spelling my name wrong for years.
'Banter' no excuse for behaviour
By Penny East
WHEN 'inappropriate sexual language' and 'unwelcome physical contact' take place at work, we must surely call it out as sexual harassment.
Gregg Wallace's attempts to minimise his actions are unhelpful — he still fails to recognise the harm caused.
There are too many excuses. Too many attempts to shift the blame.
Wallace is a household name and with that comes power. Too often men defend this kind of behaviour as 'banter'.
But it is nothing of the sort.
Wallace held the power and he chose to take advantage of that over many years.
Particularly over people who 'felt too intimidated or nervous to say anything at the time'.
I point out that, as a 'Clemmie', I spent my childhood years regularly being called 'Clammy', and joyfully, 'Chlamydia'.
And that, no, it would not have irked me one iota.
He snaps back: 'Congratulations, well done you — you're obviously not autistic.'
Had I not spent the morning with the man - and, crucially, his lovely family - I might have been pretty horrified by that.
As it is, I realise he genuinely sees things incredibly black and white.
Quite literally there is no filter with Wallace. When he feels an injustice, he says it.
Certainly you see a different side to the man - who can only go out in a disguise now, so afraid of public perception is he - when you see him interacting with his family.
His incredibly loyal wife Anna, who makes me a coffee, is lovely and his six-year-old non-verbal autistic son Sid is an utter delight.
Anna has been my rock - we had some really tough conversations when it was all kicking off but I promised her I have never, ever cheated
Gregg Wallace
Two French bulldogs, Wally and Bella, tear around the house, while his delightful mother-in-law Rina potters around in the kitchen.
Indeed, such is his autism, he makes diary reminders in his phone nudging him to be romantic.
He says: 'Anna told me once she wanted spontaneous hugs from me so that's what I do now… so the hugs might not be spontaneous for me, but they are for her.'
He credits his family for keeping him around. Without them, he admits tearfully, he might have taken his own life during a particularly bleak spell last Christmas.
He reflects: 'But then I realised that would be selfish on them, and totally unfair. Anna has been my rock - we had some really tough conversations when it was all kicking off but I promised her I have never, ever cheated.
'She knows I have not looked at another woman since the moment I laid eyes on her.
'But seeing how tough this been on them - my mum, who died earlier this year, called me one day to ask why the Prime Minister was talking about me on telly - has been heartbreaking.
'Wokeism and cancel culture is terrifying - I just hope no one else ever has to go through anything like this.'
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The Independent
40 minutes ago
- The Independent
The Maccabees on reuniting: ‘There were years when it was like a stranger messaging'
I n a dank rehearsal room in New Cross, bathed in an eerie green light that clings to the walls like moss, The Maccabees are easing back into each other's orbit. A headline appearance at All Points East is still months away. Nearest me is their guitarist Felix White, dressed all in black. 'Any requests?' he asks me. Soon the air is thick with nostalgia. Guitars twitch and flicker. Drums roar. Then in comes the choirboy vocal, clear yet quivering, as if frontman Orlando Weeks is on the verge of an apology: 'Mum said no/ To Disneyland,' he sings. 'And Dad loves the Church. Hallelujah.' It's the first time I've heard 'Lego', from their 2007 debut album, since the south London band bowed out eight years ago. But here are all the early Maccabees hallmarks: staccato riffs, adolescent romance, tenderness wrapped inside tension. Back then, in the harried sprawl of mid-Noughties UK indie – a scene of skinny jeans, dirty dance floors and MySpace pages – they briefly seemed to be just another charming, successful young band, writing cool, funny songs about wave machines and toothpaste. Yet they were always headed somewhere else, evolving, their sound increasingly adventurous on their way to a Mercury Prize nomination, an Ivor Novello award, a No 1 record and a headline performance at Latitude. Then it stopped. Seemingly out of nowhere, in August 2016, the group announced they were to be no more, save for a series of farewell celebration shows at Alexandra Palace the following year. 'We are very proud to be able to go out on our own terms, at our creative peak,' a statement read. 'There have been no fallings out.' Fans were bereft. In the years since, details of the split have remained hazy: by all accounts, it was not so much a blow-up as a simmering of fractures and differences. The pieces didn't fit together any more. While Weeks told The Independent in 2020 that the band 'just ran out of steam', blaming the creative frustrations of working as a group, it's clear a cooling-off period was needed. 'With Orlando,' says Hugo White, a guitarist in the band like his older brother Felix, 'there were a few years we didn't speak. You'd send one text maybe in six months.' They had been together their entire adult lives. 'I was 16 when I started the band,' Hugo notes. 'I was 30 when we split up.' Keeping five people together at that age 'locked into a diary that's scheduled for the next year, all intertwined in [each other's] lives', is difficult, he says. 'And I think that kind of broke in a way.' At that point, the five of them all agree, the idea of ever getting the band back together seemed inconceivable. 'It felt final,' says Weeks, who has now released three excellent solo records. 'Extremely final,' Felix jumps in, amid laughter. 'We needed it to be like that in order to move on,' says Hugo. 'It couldn't linger around.' Felix White during The Maccabees' set at the 2009 Isle of Wight Festival (Getty) We're 10 minutes in, and the group dynamic of The Maccabees is already unmistakable – a familial rhythm of in-jokes, unspoken cues and roles that feel shaped over years. If Weeks is the reluctant frontman, softly spoken and meditative, Felix is the band's ebullient cheerleader. Brooding opposite him is Hugo, with a jaw as sharp as his humour, cracking a number of close-to-the-bone barbs about the breakup. Drummer Sam Doyle and bassist Rupert Jarvis are here, too, quieter, more enigmatic. Though the mood is celebratory, there's no doubt the split was a difficult pill to swallow. 'It was so weird because you've made such a commitment to each other from a young age,' Hugo later tells me. 'So the idea that someone wants to make music outside of that group, with other people – it's almost like a betrayal... Even though it isn't.' For Felix, the way it ended, just as The Maccabees had finally earned their place at indie's top table, was, by his own past admission, 'heartbreaking'. 'We were mid-thirties and there was a real sense of saying goodbye to a part of your life,' he told us last year. The Maccabees wasn't the only breakup Felix was going through. At the same time as those bittersweet Alexandra Palace shows, he was also parting from his girlfriend Florence Welch, of Florence + the Machine. There was so much change in the air, Felix says, that it was difficult to navigate. 'Lots of endings happening in lots of different versions of life.' But then change has always been reflected in The Maccabees' music. Just as they became more expansive sonically, with gauzy guitar textures and swirling atmospherics reminiscent of Arcade Fire, so their lyrics matured. Gone were the chewed-up Lego pieces, replaced by introspection and songs concerned with the vicissitudes of ageing. Enjoy unlimited access to 100 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial. Terms apply. Try for free ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent. Enjoy unlimited access to 100 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial. Terms apply. Try for free ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent. Orlando Weeks performs during the band's 2013 Isle of Wight set (Getty) On a personal level, growing up with The Maccabees, all of us more or less the same age, I've always felt a strange sense of ownership over them, as if they are my band, a soundtrack to my coming of age. I was 20, still flinging myself across sticky, student dance floors in torn Levi's, when a mutual friend played them to me just before the release of debut album Colour It In. Then, two years later, nursing a broken heart, I found myself near Felix in the crowd as Blur played the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. 'I fell in love to your first album,' I told him. There were other encounters, too, running the gamut from cringe to extremely cringe. Backstage at the Isle of Wight Festival in 2011, introduced to Hugo by a PR, I careened into fanboy overdrive, explaining more than once that 'your band changed my life'. Professionally speaking, I couldn't be trusted to be objective, either: I spent years wearing down a late, great music editor who refused to let me write about them. Eventually, she caved, and I reviewed them at Brixton Academy, not knowing it would be one of their last shows. (Headline: 'Is it time The Maccabees headlined Glastonbury?') Of course, they're not just my band. Recently, at a stag do in the Scottish Highlands, I derived immeasurable joy from watching the groom-to-be insist on playing four vintage Maccabees songs back-to-back at 3am, those time-capsule choruses still a bottomless font of bonhomie. To me, in an era of swaggering, hyper-macho indie landfill, with bands such as Razorlight and The Rifles, their music always stood apart, shimmering with warmth and depth. Evidently, Danny Boyle thinks so too. For a pivotal scene in his film Steve Jobs , he turned to the sweeping, crepuscular tones of 'Grew Up at Midnight', lifted from the band's critically acclaimed 2012 record Given to the Wild. 'We thought that was going to make us f***ing massive in America,' says Felix. 'They used the whole song at the end and we were like, 'Oh my God, we're going to America, people…'' He pauses… 'F***ing nothing. If anything, we were smaller after the film came out.' The Maccabees at the NME Awards in 2016, shortly before their split (AFP/Getty) Be that as it may, there's no downplaying the magnitude of those farewell shows, which felt part celebration, part elegy. I was there and can attest to just how emotional they were. 'There was a real sense when those last Maccabee shows happened that everyone had been, was a particular age, and it became sort of symbolic for saying goodbye to a certain part of your life – sort of early thirties,' says Felix. 'That idea of real adulthood was upon everyone, that you're definitively ending a stage of your life – and it felt like it was inside all of the rooms when we played those shows. It felt like everyone was pouring their own collective sense of goodbye into it, whatever that might be – relationships, being young, people that couldn't be there, all that kind of stuff. So it felt very heavy.' For a while, it seemed that Felix would not look back as he set off on new paths. He launched Yala! Records, wrote the cricket-themed memoir It's Always Summer Somewhere and started a cricketing podcast called Tailenders with radio host Greg James and England's all-time leading wicket-taker Jimmy Anderson. But as time passed, he realised, 'you do get to a point where you're like, actually, life doesn't last forever. If we want to do this, it could be a really beautiful thing.' There was a recognition that it would likely feel that way for their fans, too, who had felt the poignancy of their parting, and had since perhaps been doing a lot of the things that the band had been doing, like starting families and spending more time at home. 'As a Maccabee through the ages, I think you can really hear that in the music: you can hear that we're 19, you can hear that we're 24 and so on. And the gigs used to feel like that, like when we were first playing, and there used to be people hanging from the ceiling and shoes flying everywhere and all that kind of thing. And then, as we got older, it changed into something more introspective.' As we got older, it changed into something more introspective Felix White Cut to Glastonbury this year and there The Maccabees are, headlining the Park Stage, with a comeback set that weaves all those elements together. Yes, there's introspection, but also that frenetic energy; if there'd been a ceiling, you can be sure people would have hung from it – perhaps without their shoes. 'We never thought we'd be playing these songs again to anybody,' Felix said to the crowd. So how come they are, I ask? The catalyst, Hugo says, was his wedding to the author and poet Laura Dockhill in lockdown. After hiring out a pub in Battersea, he invited Weeks on the condition, he jokes, that he would sing. 'And just for the after party,' Felix chimes in, laughing. 'It's not an open invite!' And so, for the first time since Alexandra Palace, all five of them were in the same room. Their friends Jack Peñate, Jamie T, Florence Welch and Adele all performed that night. Crucially, so, too, did The Maccabees. Reuniting, says Weeks, 'didn't feel forced, because after the end of something like The Maccabees, to coordinate a meeting felt sort of contrived. Then, suddenly, there was this event that was a very obviously uncomplicated reason to all be together.' After Covid, he explains, there were tentative conversations about a reunion. Slowly, the pieces aligned. The White brothers' new band 86TVs were forced to pause their plans after Stereophonics called back their drummer, Jamie Morrison, for a tour. 'So, suddenly, there was this fallow year for them,' Weeks continues, 'and I had finished my stuff with [his 2024 album] Loja. So it was just a natural hiatus there. If there hadn't been an All Points East that felt so good, then it might easily have just drifted and not happened. But it just felt very uncomplicated again.' The boys are back in town: The Maccabees at Glastonbury 2025 (Jill Furmanovsky) Certainly, their Glastonbury set had a natural ease and coherence. 'The thing that I was really noticing was that me, Land [Orlando] and Hugo all used to do this thing where we'd all move at the same time, like unintentionally choreographed,' says Felix, when I meet him and his brother again a few weeks after the festival. 'You'd do two steps forward, stand still, three steps back, and you feel everyone do it at the same time. Like, weird, telepathic, synchronised. And here we were doing it again.' Falling unconsciously into step with one another without even speaking, he says, was 'so weird... even beyond the playing, like it was in your body somewhere'. Beforehand, though, 'I was f***ing nervous,' says Felix. 'And the TV thing really does heighten the whole experience.' 'You can't really get a more high-pressure scenario,' agrees Hugo. They'd been calm in the days leading up to it, but that changed on the day, explains his brother. 'Land had this thing in his head where he was saying randomly, sporadically, with no context, how nervous he was out of 10. So you'd be having a chat, and he'd suddenly go 'seven', and then half an hour later, it'd be 'six', and then 'nine'.' Nerves aside, the band were thrilled with how it went. 'I didn't come down from it for days,' says Felix. The set was capped by an appearance from Welch, now back with Felix, for a rendition of her galloping 2008 hit 'Dog Days Are Over'. 'It was a rehash of what we did together at the wedding,' says Hugo. 'As soon as she sings in a room, it changes. She has that thing where she changes the atmosphere in the inner space, and it's really rare.' The whole process was very different from the classic rock cliché of 'putting the band back together' – rebuilding relationships took time. 'We'd meet up with our kids on the South Bank,' says Hugo. 'Stuff that is so far from how we would have spent every day. After a year of not speaking or whatever, you know, you go for a coffee and walk for an hour. Hugo White: 'Florence has that thing where she changes the atmosphere in the inner space, and it's really rare' (Getty) 'Obviously, it's different now,' he adds, 'because Land lives in Lisbon, but things are just back to how they were. And there were years where it was like a stranger messaging you.' Of course, there have been seismic shifts in the musical landscape since The Maccabees formed in 2004 over a love of The Clash and the BBC series Old Grey Whistle Test, which featured punchy, angular performances by the likes of Dr Feelgood and XTC ('You can see why it looked fun to play fast,' says Felix). These days, the industry is 'less focused on bands', says Hugo. 'People are creating these things on computers. Because it's cheaper, it's easier. It doesn't require the same effort as five individuals that connect in a certain way to be able to create something.' Jarvis agrees. 'It's so much more expensive to just be a new band. Back when we first started, we'd chuck in a fiver each to go and spend four hours rehearsing, [but] that doesn't get you anywhere nowadays,' he says. 'I feel very sorry for the new bands because of that, and there's a lot less new bands. You really notice that – there are fewer venues, fewer nights out, fewer things going on for bands to form a scene.' As the fashions of the scene that spawned The Maccabees in the indie sleaze era made a comeback, Weeks saw his past life through a new lens. 'We must be far enough away from that moment to look back at those pictures with a kind of giddiness,' he says. 'The colours and the weird asymmetrical haircuts and plimsoles and acrylic Perspex dangly little earrings and all of those things that, at the time, didn't feel nearly as cool as looking back at photos of The Clash. But we're far enough away from it now that it owns its identity.' The tribalism of the era, when you could tell which aisle of HMV a person would head to just by their hairstyle, holds a romantic pull for the band. 'There was still so much DIY-ness about it all,' says Weeks. 'There was more of a look, a cohesiveness of aesthetic.' Felix recalls being at a metal bar in Camden recently, 'and they've all got a look. That made me feel really nostalgic and jealous thinking, oh, I can't remember being in a place where everyone's got this code that makes them all sort of connected.' Felix White (far left): 'We spent two and a half years in full-on mania making 'Marks to Prove It'' (Jill Furmanovsky) Though the average fan's taste may seem more diverse than ever, Hugo wonders if something was lost in the transition to pick-and-mix fandom in the streaming era. 'You used to buy one album and listen to that until you got another album. [Nowadays] you don't have to listen to one album.' He stops himself and laughs. 'Do they even listen to an album? You just dart between songs like social media, scrolling through things.' The Maccabees seem conflicted about social media generally – especially its demands for self-promotion. 'When Marks to Prove It came out in 2015,' Felix recalls, 'we had a long conversation about whether we should even put on the Instagram that the album's out. We spent two and a half years in full-on mania making this record and it was generally like, is it naff to say the album is out today?' 'When you think what kids like the young artists now are expected to do, it's just, like, mind-blowing in comparison to how things worked for us,' Hugo says. 'We were so fortunate to be able to make stuff as a group of people and not be in this constantly competitive environment.' 'Just being not part of promotion,' Weeks marvels. 'Yeah, it was always someone else in control,' says Doyle. 'Deliver the artwork and they would promote it by getting posters up or whatever it was,' adds Hugo. I'd love to have seen Nick Drake's Instagram. Imagine him asking people to swipe up and share Felix White The sort of 'savviness' that self-promotion requires was not what set them on their way, notes Weeks, picking out current bands he likes – Divorce, Caroline, and Black Country, New Road – who have 'accidental alchemy' but also manage to be engaging on Instagram, without having to lay bare their 'private, inner workings'. 'I'd love to have seen Nick Drake's Instagram,' says Felix, laughing. 'Imagine him asking people to swipe up and share.' It's clear that as they prepare to play All Points East, headlining a bill that includes Irish sensation CMAT and indie stalwarts Bombay Bicycle Club, laughter and good vibes have returned to The Maccabees. 'Everyone's in a good headspace and connecting with each other, and that's allowed it to be stronger,' notes Hugo. Which raises the question: will there be more music from The Maccabees in their forties? 'Do you think that means we would make better music or worse music?' asks Felix. It'll be a different stage of life, for better or worse, I reply. 'It'll be slower,' laughs Hugo. 'There's a good feeling about it,' Felix says, with a wry smile. 'It's tempting…' The Maccabees headline All Points East on 24 August in Victoria Park; last tickets are available here . Reissues of their albums 'Colour It In' and 'Given To The Wild' are released on limited edition vinyl on 22 August. You can pre-order here
Times
41 minutes ago
- Times
How drivers were sold a car finance compensation fantasy
Britain has narrowly avoided a costly car finance compensation free-for-all after a landmark court ruling derailed chances of a payout for millions of drivers. Claims lawyers had been bombarding consumers with adverts suggesting they may have been entitled to thousands of pounds in a scandal over hidden commission on car finance deals. The scandal had been expected to rival the mis-selling of payment protection insurance, which cost banks more than £38 billion. It was thought that nearly 15 million drivers could be entitled to payouts worth as much as £44 billion in total — although Friday's Supreme Court ruling means the numbers are set to be far smaller. Questions have now been raised over whether those using car finance really lost out and how many of them deserve compensation at all. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, had tried to intervene ahead of the ruling — arguing that a colossal compensation bill for the industry would damage the economy and consumers. The Supreme Court ruled on three cases where consumers bought cars on finance and argued that they had been treated unfairly because they had not been told about commission involved in their deals — which ranged from £183 to £1,651. The court rejected two of the three cases, but upheld a complaint by Marcus Johnson, a factory worker from south Wales — because in his case the £1,651 commission in his loan was 55 per cent of the fee (including interest) on his loan over five years. 'The fact that the undisclosed commission was so high is a powerful indication that the relationship between Mr Johnson and the lender was unfair,' the court's judgment said. It leaves the door open to claims for compensation on deals that contained large amounts of commission, or where the commission model influenced what they paid. How much would be needed for a deal to be unfair is something that is likely to be decided by the City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which said it would confirm if it would introduce a redress scheme before stock markets open on Monday morning. The FCA had been investigating finance deals that had used a model called discretionary commission, which incentivised dealers to give customers a worse interest rate on their loan. However, a judgment by the Court of Appeal last October opened the door to compensation claims by millions of motorists who had bought cars on finance, regardless of the commission model. Lenders appealed to the Supreme Court over the ruling. About nine in ten cars are bought on finance and £39.7 billion was borrowed on more than two million cars in the year to May, according to the Finance and Leasing Association, a trade body. The Court of Appeal had ruled in October that car dealers had a duty to make clear the nature and value of any commission paid to them to ensure that borrowers could give 'informed consent' before agreeing to a deal. Reeves was among those concerned about a claims free-for-all, with the Treasury reportedly drawing up contingency plans to shield lenders from having to pay out billions of pounds in compensation. The Treasury attempted to intervene in the Supreme Court case, arguing that a ruling had 'the potential to adversely affect the United Kingdom's reputation as a place to do business, with a consequent impact on economic growth'. In the meantime complaints about car loans to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), a body that solves disputes, have risen from 4,130 in the first three months of 2023-24 to 37,230 in the last three months of 2024-25. Most of these have been brought by claims companies and no-win, no-fee law firms that file complaints on behalf of consumers in return for up to 30 per cent of any compensation. These companies have swamped radio, social media and television with adverts that tell consumers they could be owed thousands of pounds. On Thursday the FCA said it had required 224 adverts from claims firms about car finance to either be taken down or changed. There had been highly speculative figures advertised for how much consumers could get back, it said, including compensation figures that did not make clear they covered multiple car loans and misleading claims that refunds were guaranteed. It said companies had been signing up consumers without their consent after they clicked on adverts. Philip Salter, a former FCA regulator now at the consultancy Sicsic Advisory, said: 'I haven't liked a lot of the claims company advertising. You've had a lot of companies arguing that time is running out, but the clock hasn't even started. It's been a bit of an unseemly scramble.' • Common sense has triumphed over compensation culture If there is to be compensation for consumers, it is expected that the FCA will announce a free redress scheme where lenders will contact those eligible, meaning consumers should not need to use a claims company. Gary Greenwood from the investment bank Shore Capital said: 'It's one of those things where if you go by the letter of the law of the previous Court of Appeal judgment, you're almost coming to the conclusion that commission is bad. But the problem is that if you look at the reality of what had happened, there doesn't seem to have been a lot of consumer harm that's gone on. 'So any sort of redress has got to come down to: has there been any consumer harm here, or are people just trying to claim money back on a technicality?' Greenwood said. Charlie Nunn, the chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, which runs Britain's biggest car finance lender, Black Horse, has denied the scandal was on the same level as PPI. 'Some 80 per cent of people need finance to buy a new car, and a large number of second-hand car buyers do as well,' he told The Times in January. 'We need a well-functioning motor finance industry that supports consumers.' The National Franchised Dealers Association, a trade body, told the Supreme Court that 'nobody goes to a car dealer with a reasonable expectation that it is acting without self-interest in relation to any of the products it sells'. The Supreme Court's judgment could have been the difference between lenders facing a compensation bill of £11 billion — for complaints about a specific form of commission — and £29 billion, according to Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets, an investment bank. It could also have led to compensation claims about the sale of other financial products such as insurance where commission was involved but not properly disclosed. Consumers in turn could have had to foot the bill. Stuart Masson, the editor of the advice website The Car Expert UK, said that if lenders have to pay compensation to millions of people, car finance could get more expensive in the future as the industry tries to 'claw back' that money. 'That's not money they're going to find down the back of the sofa,' he told the BBC. 'They're going to have to get that back from increasing the costs of future lending, which won't just be on car finance. It could be on credit cards, it could be on personal loans, it could be on mortgages.' In January Reeves told bankers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: 'There is nothing pro-consumer about making it harder for people to buy an affordable car for their family.' Before the courts widened the scope of possible mis-selling, the FCA had been investigating a specific model of commission called discretionary commission. This is where the cut that lenders paid dealers was linked to the interest rate consumers were charged, incentivising dealers to charge borrowers more. This model was used in about 35 per cent of car finance deals, according to the FCA, before it banned the practice in January 2021. The FCA said consumers could have paid about £1,100 more in interest over a four-year £10,000 car finance deal because of this commission model — which is being used as the basis for many of the estimates around possible compensation. Salter, who worked on the ban when he was at the FCA, said: 'That previous Court of Appeal ruling surprised me. I think everyone knows that if they're buying a car the salesman's getting commission, don't they? But discretionary commission never felt right to me.' The FCA began its investigation in January last year on whether consumers had been properly told about the link between their repayments and the commission. The investigation was kicked off by two rulings by the ombudsman against Lloyds and Barclays last year, which ordered the banks to refund two consumers more than £1,000 each. The FCA is expected to set out its next steps, including whether there will be a redress scheme, within six weeks. Any scheme would be free and easy for consumers to use, it said, while the FOS is also free for consumers to appeal to. Rob Lilley-Jones from the consumer group Which? said: 'It's vital that finance firms are held accountable for mis-selling and if a large number of motorists are eligible for compensation consumers are likely to be bombarded with ads from claims firms offering to take on their case. 'Affected customers should be careful when enlisting the services of claims management companies as the wrong choice could lead to their case being poorly handled, losing a significant portion of the compensation in legal fees — or both.' Coby Benson from the law firm Bott & Co, which helped win the ombudsman's case against Lloyds, said the experience from PPI was that consumers could sometimes recover more money by going to court than through a redress scheme. He said: 'We would support a proactive redress scheme if it fairly compensated consumers. But we have doubts over the effective implementation of a scheme, because our data shows that about half of clients have a different address now to that which the lender had from the time of the agreement.'
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Council condemns drivers breaching Lowestoft bridge safety lights
More than 100 breaches of a bridge's red safety lights have been branded as "irresponsible" by a March and July 112 motorists using the Gull Wing Bridge in Lowestoft were caught racing through the lights to avoid waiting for the bridge to be raised, Suffolk County Council the Highways Code, motorists at flashing red lights at places like lifting bridges must stop. Failure to do so could result in penalty points or West, the council's cabinet member for operational highways, said tougher measures were being considered to tackle the issue and prevent accidents including installing automatic number plate recognition cameras. "I'm surprised it is so high," he said. "It's irresponsible driving. The majority of people are law abiding and are very sensible, but a very tiny minority are trying to jump the red lights and it only puts themselves and others in danger."Obviously one or two people always try these things, but we need to get across the message that the barrier and the red lights are there for a reason - to protect all road users. People need to adhere to that even if they're in a hurry."They need to stop at the red light, that's the safe thing to do." West added that taxpayers have to bear the cost of repairing any damage to the began recording breaches after they noticed more one occasion a van raced through and collided with the barrier, leaving it inoperable until it was council was pursuing a claim for the costs, but West said this would not be possible to do in every case. The authority was also considering putting ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras in place."It isn't something we're ruling out, we're looking at that seriously because we've got to get those numbers of people jumping the red light down," West bridge opened in September and is the third crossing over Lake Lothing. Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
