1. Letter from Chairman to Dr Stephen
Hickey, Department of Transport
VEHICLE EXCISE
DUTY EVASION:
2007 ROADSIDE SURVEY
RESULTS
As you may know the publication by your Department
on 14 February 2008 of the latest estimates of Vehicle Excise
Duty evasion has caused the Committee considerable concern and,
frankly, some embarrassment.
The Department's new evasion figures, particularly
for motorcyclists, show a dramatic reduction on the previous year's
national statistics on VED evasion on which the Committee based
its report as recently as January. This has naturally led to media
comment on the value of the Committee's examination and the quality
of its report.
It is clear that your Department must have had
concerns about the methodology used for the 2006 evasion estimate
and that officials were looking at alternative methodologies long
before the Committee's hearing. But you failed to tell the Committee
about that either at the hearing or subsequently when you had
the results from the new method. You therefore allowed the Committee
to draw up a report on the basis of information and evidence which
you knew had been called into question. You might not have felt
able to give us the specific new estimate for evasion until it
was cleared for publication, but that is no justification for
not flagging up the underlying problem.
I recognise that the Treasury Minute response
to the Committee's report will presumably refer to the new evasion
statistics, and to the implications for past estimates. But I
would appreciate an early explanation of the following:
— Why the Department did not advise
the Committee at the earliest possible date that it had reservations
about the previous year's statistics;
— Why the Department did not inform
the Committee at the hearing in October 2007 that it was working
on enhanced data collection and estimating methodologies for the
June 2007 roadside survey;
— Why the Department took so long to
publish the results of the 2007 roadside survey; and
— Why the Department did not immediately
alert the Committee once they had very different figures from
those which had been discussed with the Committee at the hearing.
As Parliamentary scrutiny has not been well
served by the way the Department has handled this matter, the
Committee may decide to take further evidence.
I am copying this letter to Robert Devereux
and to the Comptroller and Auditor General.
26 February 2008
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