Edward Leigh MP apologises for calling us tax dodgers – then does it again

A senior MP has repeated claims motorcyclists are tax dodgers – just weeks after apologising over the first time he said it.

Edward Leigh, Chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said in January: “Motorcyclists are particularly liable to evade road tax.

“Nearly 40 per cent of motorcycles are now unlicensed… Large parts of the biking community are cocking a snook at the law.”

In February, after a report Government showed Leigh’s claims were wrong, he said: “I apologise to motorcyclists.”

But in a campaign leaflet sent to voters in Leigh’s Gainsborough constituency in March, the MP again claimed:

“Motorcyclists are particularly liable to evade road tax. Nearly 40 per cent of motorcycles are now unlicensed… Large parts of the biking community are cocking a snook at the law.”

The only clue that the claims were totally unfounded lay in a tiny footnote stating: “The Dept of Transport have revised this figure to 6%”.

There was no retraction of the accusations that we’re partularly liable to evad tax and that many of us “cock a snook” at the law – and the footnote proves the pamphlet was issued after Leigh learned the claims were false.

A spokesman for Leigh at his constituency office claimed the pamphlet was “with the printers at the time the Dept of Transport advised the figures were wrong and a footnote was quickly inserted pointing out the correction”.

He claimed: “The real villain in this story is DfT for misleading the committee.”