Bike ban proposal: ACPO explains its position on banning motorcycles
Following our report on the controversial submission by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) to the Government regarding motorbikes, we spoke to David Griffin, Deputy Chief Constable of Humberside, this week, who was in charge of the report. Deputy Chief Constable Griffin is both entirely reasonable and pro?motorcycling – he rides a bike himself. He said that ACPO’s official position was neutral on power restrictions, was not in favour of any form of ban on road bikes and did not “consider motorcycles as nothing more than motorised toys”. He said, “These comments in the submission to the select committee need to be taken in the context in which they were made, which is part of one of our regular discussion groups where they were only some of many ideas being discussed. The bans were talked about while the problems of off-road machines with noisy exhausts were being aired; we are not calling for any ban on road bikes.” What about the inaccuracies? “We accept the comment about VED avoidance is wrong and we will be sending an amendment to the select committee correcting that.”
The problem here is that, while the inaccuracies might be corrected, the context Griffin speaks of is not clear in the submission to ACPO, so will they be clarifying that too? “I’m not in a position to promise that, but I can say we will discuss the possibility.”
In fact Griffin appears to be in a difficult situation. The submission was made by his predecessor, and while Griffin has no choice but to defend it, it was clear to us from speaking with him that he does not agree with it and that it does not represent ACPO’s real position. What he must do, however, is ensure the situation is corrected as far as the select committee is concerned.
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Source: Telegraph.co.uk
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