February 2025

by Robin Astle.

From HISTORIC, the FBHVC magazine 2024 Issue 4

Lord Steele of Aikwood Passes the Baton by David Whale

When Edward 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu passed away a historic vehicle dynasty came to an end. John Scott Montagu had driven his recently acquired 12hp Daimler as the first car to enter the yard of the House of Commons at Westminster in 1899. Fifty years later Edward, Lord Montagu, opened Palace House to the public. A collection of five early motor cars was placed on display in the entrance hall as a tribute to his father. Edward became president of the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs on its incorporation in 1988.

Selecting our second president was a challenge but I was quite clear that David Steel, The Rt Hon. the Lord Steel of Aikwood KT KBE PC was our man. David had already achieved much as leader of the Liberal Party from 1976 until its merger with the Social Democratic Party in 1988. David also has firm connections with the Federation through his friendship with our Vice-President Andrew Burt, they both studied law together.

My challenge was convincing David that he would make an admirable president. I visited the Lords on several occasions and consumed several cups of coffee until just before Christmas, David said “You’re not going to give up, are you?” We agreed that if I visited him again in the new year, he would accept our invitation!

David’s humility is his most charming asset, and he remains a huge advocate of the historic vehicle movement. He is truly passionate about the Jaguar marque but diverse in his interests. I remember the enthusiasm he demonstrated when his daughter found a locally owned Morris Minor as an everyday car for him and his wife Judy. Who else would choose an Austin Gypsy to participate in the London to Cape Town Endurance Rally? It succeeded with David being awarded a Bronze Medal for his endeavours.

But David always conducts himself with a certain style and when he reached a decision to withdraw from public life, he invited me to lunch to tell me. When I told him we had invited the Rt Hon Sir Greg Knight to succeed him, David’s humility came to the fore saying “Greg is an ideal President of the Federation. He was an excellent chair of the parliamentary group and while I was happy to step in on the death of Edward Montagu, he has a better collection of classic vehicles than I.”

David… thank you so much for your contribution to the Federation!

The Federation Village proves most successful yet as FBHVC Chairman inducted into Classic Motor Show ‘Hall of Fame’

The Federation Village at the Classic Motor Show, NEC, Birmingham, hosted 20 vehicles, including mopeds, motorcycles, cars, a bus, lorry, and a 25lb field gun, thanks to our stand partners. Just before the show opened at 10am on Friday 8 November, the stand teams were gathered together.

A surprise presentation was made to FBHVC Chairman David Whale, who was inducted into the Classic Motor Show’s inaugural ‘Hall of Fame’ as Industry Ambassador. This award “honours an individual who campaigns for the owners as well as the industry and strives to secure the future of classic motoring”. Mike Brewer (pictured) was announced as Community Ambassador which ‘Praises a person who represents the classic car community,

who brings new people into the hobby and gives their support to clubs and organisations.’ The presentation was made by Show Director Lee Masters (pictured).

DVLA By Ian Edmunds

As I wrote my words for the last edition of Historic, I noted that the Federation had just received notification of a revised date for the Historic Vehicle User Group (HVUG) meeting that had been postponed from late June due to the election. This meeting duly took place in September and although there is so far little concrete news to report we continue to be encouraged by what DVLA are telling us.

The meeting was informed of one very interesting statistic concerning the Call for Evidence (CfE). DVLA received around 1,400 responses which is an unprecedentedly high number. They told us that the previous CfE they issued, concerning driving licenses, had only received around 50 responses. It was explained to them that some of the 1,400 responses were themselves the distillate of thousands of individual opinions so, even if they didn’t before, DVLA now understand that the historic vehicle community comprises a large number of individuals who are very passionate about their hobby and in some cases their business.

One very encouraging piece of information was that the change of Government has had no effect on activities within DVLA to review the registration process for historic vehicles (amongst others). The CfE was a part of this long-running process which actually started some time ago. Although nearing completion, this review is still ongoing. When completed it will require the approval of the DVLA hierarchy before the proposals can be disclosed. Once this approval process is complete DVLA will share the conclusions with the HVUG, either in a scheduled meeting or, if necessary, in an extraordinary meeting.

Once all parties are agreed, the new procedures will be shared more widely and FBHVC will bring you this news at the earliest opportunity.

I am also very happy to report that via DVLA Corporate Services Manager Dudley Ashford we are beginning to re-establish the useful and constructive relationship with the Agency that we had up to a few years ago. Amongst other things this enables me to seek resolution of individual cases where a club or an owner has reached an impasse with DVLA. The Terms of Reference for the HVUG specifically exclude discussion of individual cases in the group for reasons of privacy and data protection. For the same reasons I will only refer to general principles rather than a specific vehicle or club in this column. In this context I must emphasise that DVLA do have certain obligations and restraints on what they are able to do and that such individual resolutions may not always be what the vehicle owner was hoping for.

I will close for this edition on a somewhat different topic. Recent correspondence has suggested that there may be a degree of misunderstanding with regard to the DVLA online Vehicle Enquiry Service (VES). This was instigated after the demise of the tax disc, primarily to provide a check on whether a vehicle is currently licensed and, in some cases, the MoT status. As the name implies, the intention is to provide limited information about a vehicle. Unfortunately, it is not an exhaustive means of checking on a registration number. For example, vehicles which have been inactive, i.e. not licensed, for a period, are archived to a file that VES does not access, and numbers held on retention will also not

Legislation, by Lindsay Irvine

The observant amongst you might have spotted that the update on the Protection from Terrorism Bill (Martyn’s Law) promised in the introduction to the last edition’s Legislation column had somehow gone AWOL. Probably just as well as a more comprehensive and contemporaneous summary is provided below. In addition, I touch upon the now even more fashionable topic of Road Pricing in the context of the latest Budget outcomes, and I round up with a reminder that when giving “expert” advice, the exercise of appropriate skill and care is always required to avoid legal consequences.

Martyn’s Law

As previously described in edition 2/2024, this legislation, properly named the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill, was inspired by the family of one of the victims (Martyn Hett) of the appalling terrorist incident at the Manchester Arena in 2017. The subsequent inquiry found failings by the event organisers and others relating to prevention of a terrorist act and measures to mitigate the effects of such an act when it occurred. The previous government proposed the legislation detailed in the above-mentioned edition which had broad political support. In summary, the Bill proposed the appointment of a Regulator to oversee actions by owners and operators of event premises, to ensure better preparedness for, and protection from, terrorist attacks. New statutory enforceable duties on the operators would be put into law, the extent of those duties depending on the capacity of the venue. The legislation Bill as originally proposed, envisaged two tiers, 100 to 800 capacity being Tier 1 and 800 and above Tier 2. Clearly the duties on the operators of larger venues would be more onerous but we shared the concerns of the then Home Affairs Select Committee which scrutinised the first draft of the Bill about the potentially adverse effect on smaller venues. The previous government made certain changes to address the Select Committee concerns including revised proposals which removed the requirement to complete a specified form or ensure that people working at the premises are given any specific training and confined the duties to the procedures to be followed by people working at the premises in the event of an attack occurring or being suspected as about to occur. In our response to these revisions, we made it clear we understood the rationale for the legislation but advocated further consideration of the necessity for and proportionality of the new regulatory provisions for small venues suggesting that venues below 200 capacity might be taken out of scope entirely. In addition, through a very helpful intervention by one of our member clubs, we advanced some questions on how the different level of legal duties and responsibilities would work where, as not infrequently happens, a club has hired a Tier 2 larger venue (e.g. racecourse, school or college grounds or promenade) for an event for numbers of people far less than the stated capacity.

As I had intended to inform you in my last column, when the General Election was called, certain pieces of legislation already in train had priority for passing through all the parliamentary stages before the dissolution of Parliament but this Act missed the cut. However, as we anticipated, it was announced in the King’s Speech of this new Government and we have seen the latest draft provisions. We were pleased to note that albeit expressed in a different manner, our recommendation that the threshold for a venue to be “Tier 1” be raised has been adopted which should remove most village halls. However, we have yet to see whether the revisions have any effect on concerns relating to the larger venues being used by smaller groups. We suspect that the only real impact in those situations will be in relation to cost of hire and hope that other security burdens or restrictions will not be too great. The Bill still has some Parliamentary stages to complete which we will keep an eye on.

Road Pricing and the Budget

Should we be grateful for small mercies? There were some fairly pessimistic predictions for the petrol/diesel motorist before the latest budget. On the whole not all of these have come to pass. Our principal focus has been to ensure that the zero rate VED remains untouched for vehicles in the historic vehicle class and that is indeed the case. A further benefit is that the now lengthy freeze on fuel duty also remains. This should be contrasted with fairly eye watering increases in other motoring related taxes partly driven by Treasury need for more money and partly driven by the need to incentivise EVs. Thus, while EVs will for the first time become subject to VED at the standard rate next year (with a £10 charge in year one), there are large increases for ICE vehicles emitting more than 75g/km CO2, and particularly in first year road tax. For luxury cars emitting more than 255g/km, first-year road tax rate doubles from £2,745 to £5,490.

Depending on your perspective, Road Pricing did not feature in the Budget at all. The Chancellor did not accede to the urging of various “Think Tanks” nor the Chair of the National Infrastructure Commission. Their belief is that the concept is inevitable as the numbers of ICE vehicles decline along with the fuel tax they pay and the numbers of EVs (who don’t pay) rise. They spice up their vision by making the assumption that the Treasury would see the justice in road pricing replacing fuel duty and VED entirely. They are reported as seeing “politics” as the only bar as they see the economic case as unanswerable. The problem is that as in 2007 when the concept was rejected in a petition signed by 1.8 million, the general public do not believe that the Treasury would scrap fuel duty and VED, and that road pricing would be on top.

In the absence of any current enthusiasm on the part of government, it is hard for us to construct any arguments about the status of HV exemptions in relation to road pricing, but we are hopeful a case could be made. Let us see where this one goes if the government remains short of funds and the enthusiasm of the private motorist for EVs remains attenuated. For a full and, if I might say, impressive exposition of this topic, can I refer you to Edition 3/2022.

Advice is advice OR No good deed goes unpunished

One of the issues I reminded attendees at the AGM is that the Federation Legislation Director (me and team) cannot provide free and comprehensive legal advice to all 500 member clubs and their 250,000 members. There are obviously a number of reasons why this is the case, and I am sure you can work out most of them. Firstly cost. Whilst most motor insurers offer some form of legal cover, it will almost invariably come at extra cost and will be limited to specific legal issues. It is unlikely to allow an unlimited number of legal questions on motoring matters. The service will probably have been contracted out and the firms providing it will in turn have professional liability cover. It may also be in the interest of insurers from a commercial basis for a customer to take up this service. Secondly, clearly we are not resourced nor structured to provide such a service. Thirdly, whilst it is conceivable that we will know the answer to many legal questions, there are many more that we won’t! Fourthly, legal advice must be constructed from clear and detailed instructions. Correspondents are not always forthcoming with all the details making it perilous to provide definitive answers.

However, we do like to assist where we can. Therefore, we are on occasion able to provide an answer to correspondents by directing them to official or reliable sources and in other cases we can use personal knowledge and experience to assist. In other instances, we will have contracted-in professional expertise such as to draft our Essential Guide to GDPR. Our advice comes with the appropriate warnings and disclaimers about the context in which and basis on which it is given.

Aside from cost and resources, there is the issue of liability and the problem of “No good deed goes unpunished “. This is more officially expressed through the legal principle that whether given in the course of professional business or “off duty” in a social setting, a professional can be liable for advice he provides if a duty of care can be said to have arisen. The leading case is Hedley Byrne & Co Ltd v Heller & Partners Ltd [1964] AC 465. Whilst the background to the case is in a business setting, it has been held as authority for the need for professionals to take care when providing advice off the cuff or in a social setting. If the recipient is aware of their expertise and acts to their detriment in relying on their advice, the provider can be liable if it was negligent even though free gratis perhaps at a party. The good news is the case also confirmed that a properly worded disclaimer can discharge the duty.

Whilst I have discussed this principle in the context of the Federation, I think it is relevant to club officials who are asked for advice. I have in mind particularly those who assist with completion of a V765 form or provide a report for a reconstructed HV or are asked to give valuation advice. Where such actions are performed, proper professional skill and care must be exercised, backed up as far as possible by facts and cogent evidence with any limitations on knowledge or evidence highlighted. In other words, the task should not be approached casually but with appropriate seriousness. Just because it is a club matter and not a business issue does not necessarily reduce the possibility of a duty of care arising. Where HVs of considerable potential value are involved (and indeed more broadly) clubs may wish to check and procure if necessary, the relevant liability cover. I am pretty confident club archivists and registrars invariably approach their tasks seriously but be aware of the “Can I just have a quick opinion/bit of advice?” situation and caveat any response carefully.