Throwback Thursday: IPT increase; Miller’s cable cars
Insurance Post’s Throwback Thursday steps back in time to March 1998 to remind you what was going on this week in insurance history when chancellor Gordon Brown hiked insurance premium tax and Miller was connecting the East End.
19 March 1998: Brown’s IPT blow
Chancellor Gordon Brown, who succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister in 2007, raised the rate of insurance premium tax for travel insurance to 17.5%.
The move dismayed travel insurers and the Association of British Insurers, who campaigned for the rate to remain at 4%.
A crushing blow to insurers who had believed things would only get better under the then fresh New Labour government.
Miller’s cable cars
Miller Insurance Group revealed it was underwriting an £8m project by Meridian Cable Cars.
The cable car service spans the River Thames and connects what was then the East India Station of the Docklands Light Railway with the Millennium Dome, which was being built in Greenwich.
Miller provided insurance for the construction period, plus operational risks.
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