Shady practices

Sir,

I do not always agree with everything that Andrew Frankel writes, but he is right to rail against the government’s plans to exempt pre-1960 cars from an annual MoT test.

Are the civil servants advising the government naive enough to believe that the motor trade is entirely free of individuals with propensities for shady practices, and that all pre-1960 cars would meet basic safety requirements without an inspection regime in place?

There may be a case for modifying the requirements for older cars, but scrapping an annual test altogether will, I fear, have serious implications for what is quite a large sector in the UK economy, employing thousands.

The veteran, vintage and classic car movement does not need tabloid headlines about pre-1960 cars causing deaths, injuries and damage which could result in a knee-jerk reaction by a later government to seriously curtail the use of older cars on the road. Is this what we want?

Michael Crawford, Wotton-under-Edge, Glos