Toucan

The number of motorcyclists evading vehicle excise duty (VED) rose significantly in the last 12 months, an influential committee of MPs has said.

The public accounts committee (PAC) showed the rate of evasion 2007 was 38 per cent, up from 30 per cent the year before.

It is recommending the Department for Transport (DfT) and the DVLA specifically target motorcyclists evading payment of duty.

The report indicates the DfT needed to work with motorcycling industry bodies to reduce concern about unreliable sampling methods used in measuring evasion.

In February, the DfT published new statistics, based on a survey carried out in June the previous year. These figures put the number of evasions at only 9.8 per cent.

The DfT's press release stated a new methodology had been used in the survey. It did not refer to the the difference from the previous years' figures.

The Committee has expressed surprise as to why the wide variations in figures from earlier surveys was not brought to their attention earlier.

"Parliamentary scrutiny of the executive is largely dependent on
accurate evidence," said Edward Leigh MP, chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts.

"Government departments are particularly responsible for ensuring that members of parliament are not misled, even inadvertently, by the evidence they provide.

"I am therefore very concerned that the Department for Transport gave the Committee unreliable information on the rate of evasion of Vehicle Excise Duty.

"On the basis of the Department's information, the Committee published a report for which I later had to apologise, when the Department published new, more accurate figures. We expect departments to be accurate and when they are not sure their figures are reliable, they should say so.

"I apologise again to law-abiding motorcyclists and others offended by the figures in our original report. I look to the Department to make asimilar apology."

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