Gordon Brown is hopping mad.
According to biker’s bible MCN, a badly disconcerted PM is demanding answers PDQ as to why there’s apparently been a huge a huge drop in the number of people taking the motorcycle test since the format changed last year.
The row began when Tory MP Anne Main’s husband Andy, a “life-long biker,” read in MCN that 50,000 fewer people took the test in the first eight months of its new incarnation. Alarm bells ringing, he told Ms Main at once. “My wife doesn’t sit around” he noted.
No indeed. At this week’s PMQs, the St Albans MP took Brozza firmly to task. “Since 2008 and the introduction of new rules on motorcycling and tests, the number of people taking the test has declined by 62%,” she noted, “and the number of people passing the test has declined by 58 per cent.
“The motorbiking industry,” she explained, “is extremely important in the UK. What will the Prime Minister do to rectify what is obviously a very poor system?”
The beleaguered Brown fought back gamely with: “I shall take the figures that the honourable Lady has given me and ask the Transport Minister to look into that very matter. It is important that we have a strong motorcycling industry in this country, and it is important that her question about the specifics of the tests be answered.”
The riding of motorcycles is not expected to become compulsory, however, during the life of the current Parliament.
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