Written question asked by Lord Grayling (Conservative) on Monday, 30 October 2006, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 1 November 2006. It was answered by Stephen Ladyman (Labour) on Monday, 6 November 2006 on behalf of the Department for Transport.

MOT

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether provision is made for the compensation of providers of motor vehicle maintenance services for (a) loss of earnings and (b) additional costs in circumstances of technical difficulties with the MOT IT system.

Answer: In the event of disruption to the MOT computerisation service, there are currently two business continuity procedures which are available to garages to ensure that they can continue to test vehicles. One militates against a failure of the local garage computer equipment whilst the other militates against a large scale database or telephone outage. There should therefore be very few circumstances under which garages incur either (a) loss of earnings or (b) additional costs as a result of technical difficulties with the MOT computerisation system. The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) would however, consider claims for compensation where a garage could demonstrate that it had suffered financially as a result of these business continuity procedures being unavailable.

Secondary information