Sir Greg Knight is an enthusiastic collector of cars, particularly Jensens. He is an advisor to Cambridge & Counties Bank’s Classic Car Finance team, working with us to support the classic and historic car industry. Sir Greg is the current Conservative MP for East Yorkshire, and is also chair of the All Party Parliamentary Historic Vehicle Group.
New rules and regulations affecting the use of historic vehicles are usually introduced by a government in one of two ways; by accident or design. Of these, the biggest threat by far is the accidental route.
Civil servants seeking to deal with a particular difficulty often only focus on the narrow issue that is perceived to be the problem and not always fully on the wider consequences of what is proposed.
It was this approach by the Law Commission five years ago that nearly banned the casual use of historic vehicles for weddings, until the All Party Parliamentary Historic Vehicles Group, (APPHVG) which I chair, pointed this out and their wider proposals were dropped.
The APPHVG was formed back in the late 1990’s by me – a Conservative Member of Parliament, together with the then Labour MP, the late Bob Cryer, to ensure that historic vehicle owners had an effective voice in Parliament. We decided that our influence would be stronger if it brought together politicians of different parties, so whichever Party was in power, we would always have some support on the government side. Our group has since gone from strength to strength and we now have politicians from all the major political parties as members.
The group that I chair actually draws its strength from the fact that it is “all party” and is not just representative of a small, one-party clique.
When covering politics, the media nearly always focus on the differences between us, but there are many issues where political opponents can and do agree – and the subject of historic vehicles is one of them. The pleasure and enjoyment that many Britons get from viewing, buying and driving classic and historic cars is widely acknowledged across the political spectrum.
And what I also like about our hobby is that it is classless. From the owner of a Rolls Royce Phantom III, to the family who enjoy their rare Facel Vega Coupe, to the student in his Morris Minor Traveller, we are all playing our part to keep the world’s motoring heritage alive. The APPHVG plays its part too by seeing that we can all enjoy, not just ownership, but continued use of our vehicles.
The risk of new regulations and decrees is ever-present. Recently, the government consulted on introducing a national framework of rules for low emission zones for our cities. Thanks to a combination of lobbying by the APPHVG and the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs, historic vehicles are now generally to be exempted.
The quest by national governments for better air quality and improved road safety will continue to grow. Some road safety campaigners often assume that modern cars, packed as they are with all the latest technology, are safer on our roads, for both motorists and pedestrians alike.
However, the latest figures tell a different story. Classic and historic vehicles make up 0.6% of the total number of licensed vehicles in Britain but they are involved in a mere 0.03% of all road accidents.
The figures also reveal that in 97% of road collisions, the cause of the accident is human error and not the condition of the vehicle.
It is worth repeating these statistics to anyone who questions the continued use of historic cars on the public highway. They confirm what many of us have long known, namely that the historic vehicles on our roads are both cherished and driven carefully.
