BDN News Article, May 2016
What are the politicians playing at? At best it’s procrastination. At worst they have decided they are not going to stick to their word. There are reasons to fear the latter. It is now 13 months since the government promised to include electric PTWs in the plug-in grants scheme that had been benefitting the buyers of cars and vans. The general election was imminent and the announcement made headline news, underlining the green credentials of the Tory and Lib-Dem administration. The grants, they said, would be instituted as soon as the dust had settled.
We are still waiting and, more worryingly, it seems the Minister and his Civil Service advisers are trying to pretend it never happened. If you look on the website of the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) the original announcement has mysteriously disappeared. As our e-bike correspondent Paul Blezard commented: “It has been expunged from the OLEV memory banks like some communist big-shot deleted from a politburo photograph in Stalinist times.” One document remains, prominently stamped with what looks suspiciously like a disclaimer: “This news article was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government.”
Far from helping the situation, the government has acted like a hit and run driver. With an eye on an election it thought it could lose, it sped in, knocked what few e-bike sales there were for six and appears to have left the scene. If the government truly believes in saving the environment, grants to encourage electric motorcycles are a no-brainer. Plug-in grants for e-bikes would cut emissions and boost the motorcycle industry. Unlike for cars, more e-bikes would also cut congestion.
So why does the government continue to discriminate against motorcycles? Are we to assume that the MCIA’s efforts to convince the powers-that-be that PTWs are “part of the solution” are falling on deaf ears?
Regardless of your attitude towards e-PTWs, if you support the motorcycle industry, if you believe in fair treatment for all modes of transport, then contact your MP, circulate this article on social media and do everything you can to demonstrate that we are not going to accept this unprincipled U-turn.
Article originally sourced from British Dealer News