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The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has been convicted and fined for not taxing a 24-year-old car, through a controversial fast-track court system.
He was found guilty last month under a system critics have described as “conveyor-belt justice”, with magistrates deciding on hundreds of daily cases and sometimes spending less than a minute on them.
City Hall officials say the car does not belong to either Khan or Transport for London (TfL), raising the possibility he was wrongly convicted.
The mayor has been the focus of protests by motorists angry at the expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) to cover the whole of London, who said they planned to register cars in Khan’s name – supposedly to make him liable for the £12.50 daily charge.
The prosecution was taken by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), the government organisation that maintains databases of drivers, which accused Khan of being the keeper of the vehicle when it was spotted as being untaxed on 24 January.
A magistrate, sitting in a private hearing of the single justice procedure in Herefordshire, convicted Khan in his absence and ordered that he pay a £220 fine, £85 in costs and settle the £35.84 bill for unpaid tax on the Micra.
After the Press Association flagged the criminal conviction to the DVLA on Tuesday, officials confirmed they were reviewing the case and investigating the circumstances of the prosecution.
In a development that raised more questions, court documents show that DVLA letters addressed to the mayor about the unpaid tax bill were sent to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant in east London instead of the nearby TfL offices.
The mayor faces the possibility of having to appear in court in person to try to overturn the conviction.
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The single justice procedure was brought in in 2015 as a cheaper method of dealing with low-level criminal cases, allowing magistrates to sit alone and in private to hand out convictions rather than sitting in open court.
The system, which is under government review, was criticised in 2024 when about 59,000 train-fare evasion convictions had to be overturned for being unlawful and it emerged children had been wrongly convicted in the secretive courts.
It has also been the focus of intensifying scrutiny thanks to regular incidents of sick and incapacitated pensioners being harshly convicted for not paying their household bills.
In Khan’s case, court records seen by the Press Association show he was prosecuted by the DVLA after the annual tax on the blue Nissan Micra, which was first registered in 2002, ran out in September last year.
The DVLA has been approached for comment.
