You really haven't bothered to properly read what I posted. Or maybe you're having difficulty in understanding. Either way, I don't have the time, patience or will to enlighten you.
Oh well, looks like I'm on my own to decipher one of your potential, but not obvious, points.
In your original post it would appear that you said nobody knew about the consultation. In my first post I decided not to directly pick you up on this, but I will now: what you posted about lack of consultation on the consultation is patently untrue. I contributed to it myself, so it wasn't "hidden" and in any case - are you some kind of authority in the field of cars and legislation - I would guess not - otherwise you would have heard about it - and this is the thing - the consultation was specifically looking for input from the entire ecosystem of classic car enthusiasts and modifications industry.
In another post you dug your heels in a bit and stated that it didn't say what prompted the consultation - which was then debunked immediately.
You imply that the consultation was a "front" or veiled attempt to impose greater VED/replace Fuel Duty across the entire car owning public. Without evidence. I say this implied point is imagined and not real. The most likely reason, in my view (being a car person after all) for the consultation was to ensure any and all of the "highly modified" electric conversions - which up until recently were extremely rare, but now are obtaining significant momentum within the industry - were safe and roadworthy and up until recently had no real legislative background to assure safety to both the user and the general public.
Moreover, the point about FOI being ignored is highly unlikely.
If your original post is implying that pay per mile was the fundamental raison d'etre for the consultation, again, I would strongly suggest that this is not the case - this consultation was centred entirely around safety aspects. I completed the consultation survey, so I am personally familiar with it's contents and nothing in the questionnaire centred on any kind of tax revenue, whether that be pay per mile or VED brackets. Nada.
If you mean that pay per mile is inevitable - then I wouldn't disagree with that sentiment. I actually support it myself. Owning very inefficient performance cars, and driving them "inefficiently", lol, and with those being high on VED - the counter to which is that when driven "rarely" or for few miles per year, this high VED cannot possibly "justified" on a CO2 output basis, since the efficient, low VED bracket turbo-diesel rep-mobile doing 20,000 to 30,000 mile per annum pumps out tens of times more CO2 than my car driven 1,500 miles per annum. That said, with Fuel Duty it was a hidden pence per mile payment anyway.
Reduction in Fuel Duty Revenue from increasing EV sales does therefore need a re-balance. Anyone can see this and no I didn't read it here first - this has been a topic for discussion for many years already. However, the Tax system is also used to "shape consumer behaviour" as well as raise revenue for public services. So persuading consumers to change into EVs being a real thing - EVs got lots of Tax Breaks for early adopters. As I said earlier, this VED break for EVs is about to start to change in only 4 months time from now - but has been debated for years already about which is more important at the time: the balance between Tax Revenue and consumer behaviour is a complex topic.
If you think that pay per mile on the basis of MOT mileage is in nay way shape or form a "viable method", then I think you are smoking something. It isn't.
Also, ANPR is not a viable method. There are an infinite number of routes and therefore mileages than can be accrued between 2 separate cameras. Without a ANPR style tracking device on every single street corner and deployed across every twisty country road, ANPR is not viable in the real world.
My tuppence is that the only viable and accurate method of mileage tracking - and attributing that mileage to an individual for billing and payment responsibility - is with on-board vehicle tracking.
Tracking systems are already deployed in every single new car manufactured since a few years ago. (Mileage alteration detection has been a thing since OBDII albeit with on-board sensors and logging - so this in itself is not a viable system for pay per mile - but it was a sign of things to come). Many new vehicles (particularly software-laden EVs) come with report-back-to-manufacturer-data-link systems that can send data back to the manufacturer over the internet. It is in the manufacturer's interests to do this to prevent out-of-warranty based warranty claims being paid. In fact the data logging extends to many variables in most cars since before 2010. (For instance, we had a 2009 Porsche 997 Turbo that we sold a couple of years ago and Porsche wouldn't put a value on it until they'd hooked it up to their data-download system to check how many times the car had data-logged an "engine over-rev" event between gear-changes. Needless to say I declined and sold it to a Porsche Specialist instead of entertaining such ridiculousness of "excuse for lowball offer".)
Until vehicle tracking and reporting systems are more generally
accepted for such transactions - and we do know that they are
already fitted and being
actively used - then I believe that any other pay-per-mile system would be fundamentally flawed - and enough to be clearly considered not viable by policy makers.
So, this consultation on older vehicles and modifications "might" be considered as a veiled attempt to leverage old car owners to accept enforceably-fitted tracking systems into modified vehicles, but I strongly believe that would be a stretch of imagination - simply because it leaves out the cars in the intervening period - the
inbetweeners. Inbetweeners such as my 1999 Mitsubishi Evo 6, which has an aftermarket ECU retuned with Manifold Air Pressure (MAP) sensor instead of Mass Air Flow (MAF) sensor to safely run higher turbo boost through a 3" exhaust and custom air intake (~18mpg on road, ~7mpg on track, but only did 1,500 miles last year). Which is now a "keeper" car - partly due to the ever-encroaching electronic big brother systems now being fitted to modern vehicles. Will cars like this ever be forced off the public road? Or require mandatory tracking devices? At the owner's expense? Who knows...
TLDR: If you need to spell out your conspiracy theories, please do better in future, since I wasn't the only one struggling with your intended meaning. If you had one?
See screenshot and video link.
