When two world's collide

As a businessman and local councillor I have to be scrupulous to keep business and political matters entirely separate. The penalties for nest feathering are very severe, it is therefore essential that the public is fully aware what your interests are, and that you declare them when necessary.

Having said all that, I now find myself in a position where my professional expertise and my role as a Conservative councillor have met neatly in the middle.

Philip Hammond, Secretary of State for Transport and Cabinet Minister, recently announced that he intended to carry out a review into the MOT testing regime, and to come forward with recommendations regarding its future. The previous government did a similar exercise some five years ago and decided to leave well alone, "if it's not broken, don't try to fix it", however that was before the financial crash, and the need for every government department to save money where possible.

I have read numerous pieces in the last few weeks, written by people with little or no knowledge of the MOT scheme that insinuate that the current scheme is "Gold Plated" and out of step with the rest of Europe, that vehicles are now more reliable and do not need to be tested as often, and that reducing the incidence of testing will somehow save money for the motorist and the country as a whole.

I have to say, most of that is complete rubbish.

We have more experience of testing vehicles than the rest of Europe put together, we started back in the early 1960's and have continued ever since. Most of the other countries in Europe have based their testing regime on our experience, however some 20 years ago the European Commission, in a bid to get testing systems introduced into every country in the EU, allowed new members to introduce a halfway scheme, where vehicles where first tested at 4 years old, and then every other year after that, what is known as a 4-2-2 schedule, the theory was that our 3-1-1 schedule was too onerous as a first step, but all members should strive to get there eventually.

Now 20 years later, it appears that we may have our standards dragged down to European levels rather than the rest of Europe reaching ours. The implications of this change are too awful to contemplate, it will probably lead to the closure of many rural garages that rely on their MOT trade to exist, it is estimated that some 40,000 mechanics will lose their jobs as a result. Countries that have 4-2-2 at the moment have an accident rate for killed and serious injury accidents, (KSI) attributed to mechanical defects of around 7%, our KSI is about 3%, changing to 4-2-2 in this country will almost certainly lead to an extra 350+ road deaths every year.

The insurance industry have already said that premiums are sure to rise as a result of increased accident risk if the change is implemented, this will completely wipe out any savings the motorist will get from the £25 per year reduction in MOT fees paid and on top of all that all evidence points to the fact that even though vehicles are more reliable there is no evidence at all that they are any safer or that the components on a modern car last longer than in the past. In fact tyres, brakes and suspension components do not last as long now as they did even 10 years ago and failure rates are still going up!!

So I find myself on both sides of the argument at the same time, only on this occasion no one has yet to convince me that a change to 4-2-2 will be for the better in any measure, my representations to the government review team will certainly make that point.