Mayor of London Lord Sadiq Khan of Tooting says he has fallen victim to a scam after he was convicted and fined for not taxing a 24-year-old Nissan Micra. The Labour politician, 55, was prosecuted last month by the DVLA for keeping an unlicensed vehicle and ended up being handed a £220 fine by a court in Herefordshire, after the case was dealt with in private in a fast-track court process. His office insisted the vehicle did not belong to Lord Khan and it has been wrongly registered in his name. In a strongly-worded statement on Wednesday morning, a spokesperson for the mayor said he is the victim in this case and should not have been prosecuted and convicted.
"This is a scam, which is a crime," the spokesperson said. "It's not the first time the mayor has been victim of a scam involving people falsely stating that Sadiq is the owner of a vehicle. Such behaviour is illegal, and the DVLA are aware." After Lord Khan expanded the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) to cover the whole of London, he faced a wave of protests, including from motorists who said they planned to register their car in the mayor's name - supposedly to make him liable for the £12.50 daily charge. The prosecution was brought by the DVLA through the Single Justice Procedure, a controversial fast-track court process which allows magistrates to sit in private to deal with low-level criminal cases.
The government is currently reviewing the process, after a slew of scandals including children being unlawfully prosecuted and sick pensioners being handed criminal convictions for not paying household bills while in hospital. The DVLA has said it is investigating the circumstances of the prosecution of Lord Khan, and it is understood efforts are being made to urgently reopen the case in order to overturn the conviction. The mayor was found guilty by a magistrate on August 18 after no plea was entered to the charge, and he was ordered to pay a £220 fine, £85 in costs, and settle the £35.84 bill for unpaid tax on the Micra.
In a further twist, court documents show that DVLA letters addressed to the mayor about the unpaid tax bill were sent to Gordon Ramsay's east London restaurant, instead of the nearby TfL offices. The mayor, who became Baron Khan of Tooting after he was appointed to the House of Lords in July, could have to appear in court in person to try to overturn the conviction, if the DVLA opts not to reopen the case itself. The Single Justice Procedure was invented in 2015 as a cheaper method of dealing with low-level criminal cases, but has been dubbed "conveyor belt justice" by critics due to the speed that cases are dealt with.