Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
DEPARTMENT FOR
TRANSPORT & DVLA
17 OCTOBER 2007
Q60 Mr Mitchell: So it is the underclass.
Mr Bennett: It is the people who
treat their cars as vehicles to use without actual registration.
Dr Hickey: There is a definition
of them which is in the report.
Mr Bennett: There is a definition.
Dr Hickey: Basically it is putting
together a number of indicators. The indicators are people who
have been untaxed for three months, so it is not somebody who
has just forgotten for a month or two, three months untaxed; or
between keepers for three months, so it is a car that I sold but
there is no registered keeper who has allegedly bought it, so
it has disappeared somewhere; or the keeper has no postcode so
although we think we have a keeper, regrettably we cannot actually
find them; or they have a number plate but it is not on the record,
it is some funny number that has been invented; or, your point
I think, it is a number plate that applies to a different model;
or it has been declared scrapped but actually it is not scrapped,
it is still driving around. The definition of the underclass is
a vehicle that falls within any one of those six categories.
Q61 Mr Mitchell: Okay. You catch
up with that from your own records, has this thing been registered
or taxed, but also from observation. When I go round estates canvassing
I often see this kind of car there which is there when you are
canvassing and at the next election as well, it does not appear
to have moved.
Dr Hickey: That is why local authorities
as well as ourselves are very keen to do something.
Q62 Mr Mitchell: I have written to
you about a case in Grimsby of a poor chap who bought a car which
turned out to be reconstructed from a wrecked car but was sold
to him with a replacement logbook issued by you and tax disc issued
by you. He then found that the number plate on those documents
was for a car in a salesroom in Chesterfield which was SORN'd
or whatever you call it, not a sawn-off shotgun, and that had
been registered with you and this never emerged from your system.
Do your computers not talk to each other? How can that happen?
Mr Bennett: I honestly do not
know and on the specific case I cannot say. If somebody has rebuilt
a car basically it would have to go for re-inspection and the
re-inspection would trigger off the ability to re-register that
vehicle, so it should have been checked, and very often they are
visibly checked as well. I cannot comment on the specific case
because I do not know how it happened but if they had gone through
the process it would have gone through a routine process which
the local offices would cover. It could be illegally put together
and maybe illegally registered, I do not know.
Q63 Mr Mitchell: It was illegal.
Mr Bennett: It would be picked
up then.
Q64 Mr Mitchell: It was only picked
up after this guy had handed over 7,000 quid for a blue Fiat.
Mr Bennett: I do not know whether
he checked with our records to check the vehicle was okay or not.
Q65 Mr Mitchell: He bought it with
a logbook and a tax disc issued by you.
Mr Bennett: As this is a specific
case I am dealing with that separately, but the short answer is
there is a mechanism to check.
Q66 Mr Mitchell: Which did not work
in that case.
Dr Hickey: Just for clarity, the
underclass as in the definitions I gave refers to the vehicle
and not the person, just for the record.
Mr Mitchell: This was not an underclass
character. I hope you deal with the letter I sent you.
Q67 Mr Touhig: Mr Bennett, we read
in paragraphs 3 and 32 of the report that the DVLA did not meet
its evasion target in January and will not meet the target in
December either. Is that because the targets are unrealistic or
are you incompetent?
Mr Bennett: First of all, it is
quite true to say that is the situation. The difficulty with the
targets is that we had three targets which were related to one
another. Fundamentally there was an underclass target which had
been recommended by the Jill Dando Institute, which was a 50%
reduction in the underclass, and we have been through how difficult
the underclass situation is. That then has a knock-on effect on
road evasion and on the tax. It is true to say that those targets
will not be possible to hit for that reason, but largely it is
because of this issue of the rise in the underclass that we have
not been able to stem.
Q68 Mr Touhig: The underclass people
who evade?
Dr Hickey: Yes, this 50% reduction
was the major factor and clearly we have not done that, indeed
it has grown, and that is part of the problem.
Q69 Mr Touhig: You said in answer
to the Chairman that every indicator you had showed that the evasion
issue was improving. How on earth could it show that from this
report? Are your systems that bad? Is your data gathering that
bad?
Dr Hickey: Might I say something
about the methodology. I apologise, it is complex, but it is for
the Committee perhaps. The way this survey is done is by standing
by the roadside, and it used to be people with clipboards but
increasingly cameras, looking at vehicles. In this particular
survey it was 1.3 million vehicles roughly. Of those that went
by, about 1.8% were non-licensed. They started off with 1.8% and
that 1.8% is the crude number, and that is very consistent with
other survey information. It was consistent with the previous
survey in 2005, there was no change. It was consistent with a
police survey, a much smaller survey, which pointed to 1.9%. The
crude measure, standing by the roadside counting the vehicles
and checking are they taxed or are they not taxed, had not changed,
it was the same, and a lot of other evidence was suggesting the
same. The reason why the number got so much bigger was because
of the analysis which was then done on those crude numbers. That
analysis has two elements to it. One is there is weighting for
different types of vehicles and different types of roads, and
when you have done all that that gets to 2.2% evasion, which is
bad but not cataclysmic. The really sophisticated bit is that
they then compare the frequency with which licensed vehicles are
spotted with the frequency with which unlicensed vehicles are
spotted. Basically what they are saying is that unlicensed vehicles
appear less often. People who do low mileage you would expect
to appear less often because statistically you are not going to
spot them so often. They apply a quite complicated methodology,
which I will not attempt to explain, which grosses up for the
number of people who are very rarely spotted but do exist out
there, and it is that relationship which has changed dramatically
between 2005 and 2006.
Q70 Mr Touhig: It is very complex.
Dr Hickey: I apologise for that
explanation but it is a factor and that is why we were surprised
as well, to be honest, because that is not visible when you just
stand by the road and count them.
Mr Bennett: To add to the point,
and the point is very valid, the last time we did that review
was we did a JDI survey which picks up the level of non-compliance,
if I can put it that way. In 2005 that was 930,000 vehicles. That
pointed us in the direction of saying we really needed to do some
different things with wheel clamping and our partnerships. The
problem is this time we have not yet had that survey done because
the survey follows on from the completion of the roadside survey.
We will get another one of those and that will give us very specific
details about the level of evasion of the hard evader and then
we can look again at the actions. The real answer to your question
is we rely upon an annual review of the hard evader and then we
adjust our enforcement accordingly.
Q71 Mr Touhig: Post this report do
you think you are now getting the numbers down or not?
Dr Hickey: The 2007 survey has
taken place, it was done in June of this year, but we have not
yet got the results. The results will be published, we think,
probably early next year, in January.
Q72 Mr Touhig: We wait for those
with anticipation.
Dr Hickey: That will be interesting
because by last June some of the actions that DVLA are taking
had been in place. They were not in place back in 2006.
Q73 Mr Touhig: Forgive me, I have
little time. What happens when a vehicle is spotted in a street
and it has no tax disc? I do street surgeries and I came up to
a street surgery recently and someone said to me, "Look,
that car is not taxed", I reported it to the police and the
car is still there. Who is responsible for dealing with that?
Mr Bennett: We would have several
mechanisms for dealing with that. Sometimes the public will report
it to our hotline. We could find that ourselves through wheel
clamping, so the wheel clampers would go round, assuming it is
on a public road, going back to the point we made earlier, clamp
the vehicle and take the vehicle in. We have enforcement officers.
Q74 Mr Touhig: Who does that, you
or the police?
Mr Bennett: We would do that if
it is on a public road.
Q75 Mr Touhig: Do the police have
a role here or not?
Mr Bennett: The police could do
it, but it is not their main—
Q76 Mr Touhig: I am told by one of
the neighbours the police did visit but the car is still there.
Mr Bennett: The police could send
a report on it.
Q77 Mr Touhig: You have got a vehicle,
it is untaxed, can you destroy that vehicle?
Mr Bennett: Oh, yes.
Q78 Mr Touhig: You can.
Mr Bennett: Yes, and we do.
Q79 Mr Touhig: I think it is a good
idea that if you get somebody like that, you get them, you prosecute
them, you take the vehicle off them and turn it into scrap.
Mr Bennett: If you take the wheel
clamping situation, and we have increased wheel clamping, what
they will do is take it to a pound, they will hold the vehicle,
take the release fee and surety fee and the vehicle will be released,
the person has to come back with a tax disc and then the surety
will be refunded. If they do not pay the surety fee or release
fees we will scrap the vehicle.
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