The Public Accounts Committee has apologised for that fraudulent claim by the DVLA that 38% of motorcyclists are tax evaders:
The influential Commons Public Accounts Committee of MPs has apologised to motorcyclists after wrongly suggesting 40% of motorbikes were untaxed.
Well, well, well. That doesn’t happen very often. Just a reminder of where that figure came from:
The DVLA sent people out to take down the registration number of every passing vehicle and they then checked this against the tax database. This yielded a figure of 16 per cent evasion for bikes. They then ran this through a computer model working on the assumption that untaxed bikes are ridden less and arrived at a figure of 38 per cent.
To those of you who may be struggling with this; they made it up.
So, the DVLA plucked the figure out of their collective arseholes, and the committee swallowed it unconditionally. Now that they’ve been caught out, the Public Accounts Committee have had the decency to apologise. Damn right, too.
Committee chairman Edward Leigh blamed the error in last month’s report on the Department of Transport, saying it now estimated the figure at 9.8%.
At the time he accused motorcyclists of “cocking a snook at the law”.
I was somewhat caustic with my remarks regarding Edward Leigh. While I accept the apology and note it in his favour, I would point out that he should have damn well realised that something was amiss before he made his intemperate and insulting remarks about his employers.
Mr Leigh added: “The department did not, however, give us all of the information we needed.”
Well, there’s a surprise. The DVLA is serially incompetent. A casual bystander would have smelt the proverbial rodent at a thousand paces and asked some awkward questions. They would have demanded all of the information before jumping to conclusions and making those remarks. Sorry Edward old bean, you were a fool and your apology, while welcome, does not mitigate that fact. When dealing with serial liars and frauds, you should expect them to be manufacturing the figures and approach them with extreme caution. You didn’t and that was entirely your fault.
David Taylor of the Motorcycle Industry Association is still unhappy with the way that the DfT gathers information.
He added: “The DfT should be embarrassed and should apologise to the vast majority of powered two-wheeler riders who clearly do pay VED.”
Agreed. I’m not holding my breath, though…
” . . should apologise to the vast majority of powered two-wheeler riders . .”
Apologise? What is the point of a meaningless burble signifying and costing nothing? We’ve had too many “apologies” from the jobsworths. On the contrary, a few salutary sackings (for lieing and incompetence) with loss of pension rights might force the jobsworths and their bosses to “learn some lessons”.
So we hang them, then?