The insurance ombudsman gives this as an example of an exclusion clause.

Most motor insurers won't pay for stolen cars when the keys are in or near the vehicle. At the extreme, this can lead to car-jackings being excluded. The ombudsman says

If insurers intend to use exclusions of this type to defeat the sort of claims most people would expect to be met, they will have to give these terms extra prominence. It is not enough to say the policyholder had an opportunity to read his policy and understand what the insurer would not pay for. If an insurer will not pay for some thefts, it must make this abundantly clear.

The ombudsman gives some examples of complaints they have dealt with.

• Cover was arranged over the phone and the car was stolen the next day. The policy did not arrive until after the car was stolen, so the insurer could not rely on an exclusion which it had not mentioned on the phone.
   
• The policyholder left the keys in his car when he went to speak to his son about 8 feet away, and thieves drove the car off. The ombudsman held that the insurer was liable despite an exclusion clause.
   
• The policyholder backed out of his garage and popped back into the house for 30 seconds. When he came back out, the car had been stolen. The ombudsman accepted the claim, saying the policyholder had not been reckless.
   
• But someone left his Land Rover outside a terraced house while he went inside to close windows upstairs and downstairs and set the alarm. There was a spare set of keys in the vehicle, which was stolen. The ombudsman rejected the complaint.

The ombudsman has to decide whether the car was unattended in the sense defined by law, and whether a policyholder behaved reasonably. This can be influenced by

• The value of the car (look after a Porsche more carefully than a Lada)
   
• The neighbourhood
   
• The degree to which the driver kept the vehicle under observation
   
• How long the car was likely to be unoccupied.

This means you may briefly have left the keys in your vehicle, and if it is stolen your claim may be paid despite an exclusion clause in the policy.