A senior Labour MP has been banned from driving for eight weeks after police stopped his car and found he had no insurance and an expired MOT certificate.
Jon Cruddas, 50, was driving a Land Rover Freelander near Hyde Park in central London on July 6 when he was pulled over by officers who noticed what appeared to be a defective brake light.
The MP for Dagenham and Rainham, who is chairing Labour’s policy review, was banned from driving for eight weeks for not having any insurance and fined £300 for an expired MOT.
Dressed in a dark suit and red tie, sheepish-looking Cruddas pleaded guilty to both charge when he appeared in the dock at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday.
Daniel Irving, prosecuting, said: “At 9am on July 6, police saw a grey Land Rover Freelander with a brake light that wasn’t aligned.
“Checks revealed a test certificate had expired in June and no insurance was held. Land Rover had sent a letter saying the insurance expired some ten days before the event.
“When he was pulled over, he said ‘sorry I don’t have insurance'”.
The court heard that Cruddas already had six points on his license for speeding, so a further six points would have meant a compulsory driving ban.
Mark McDonald, mitigating for the MP, said Cruddas put paying for everything on a “to-do” list, but simply forgot about it.
He added: “He thought he had two weeks to pay and simply didn’t read the letter properly. He wrongly assumed and didn’t check and didn’t read the letter basically.
ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE 
Pingback: ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE | ARTICLE: WARNING! John Cruddas MP -WANTS TO FORCE PARENTS TO DRUG THEIR KIDS OR LOSE THEIR BENEFITS
Hang on a minute, Bob.First, can I amssue that Crudass is of the compass group? If so, then I’m sure that the Campaign group are laughing their socks off at him and what he is saying.The Campaign group have been saying this all along and actually challenged the party to choose in the Leadership ballot.Compass saw best in the Deputy(?). Governments lose elections’. True, but how and why?Only once in history has a workable’ party lost and election to a workable’ opposition. (Ted Heath 1970.)Major lost because he was economically incompetenmt and his party was total sleaze and lost the confidence in the people.Blair won because he was considered clean and bright with an economic plan.Cameron and Osborne fall short in every one of those departments.No chance is Gordon Brown’s party full of sleaze. Not even party funding is sleaze.No chance did Brown get it wrong over the last decade for the economy. In fact, he got it more or less right throughout.A turn away from the last ten years may be desirable but it is very unpredictable in the longer run. We have been where Crudass wants to take us, but we lost on every occassion.Every indicator that I have is that Labour have been successful and the electorate appreciate that, BUT..those same people FEEL pressurised on a number of fronts.Council Tax being the biggest burden to potential personal family wealth.The successes of Education are beginning to prosper (all of my children are about to become graduates-thank you Tony) and all of our new hospitals will be open soon with a NHS that is about to become awash with a surplus of money (a crime but it is
LikeLike