Bassetlaw MP John Mann’s car sabotaged

BASSETLAW MP John Mann has spoken of his ‘lucky escape’ after driving 200 miles down the A1 with wheel nuts removed from all of his tyres.

Mr Mann drove back to Bassetlaw from London on the evening of Monday 7th August and struggled to control his car once it left the A1 in Notts.

The Labour MP said he had noted an ‘apparent engine noise’ on the journey, but the problem became much worse once he started driving on country lanes off the A1.

The front wheels of his car had been stripped of their wheel nuts plus all four locking nuts had been removed from his tyres.

But the wheel hubs were subsequently replaced meaning the theft was not spotted by Mr Mann or the car security system in Parliament.

Mr Mann said he believes it was an interrupted attempt at stealing the wheels rather than a murder attempt on him.

“The consequences of this madness do not bear thinking about. I and others could easily have been killed,” he said.

“Nobody could have spotted that the wheel nuts had been removed, which makes the callous nature of the crime even worse.”

Mann said only registered garages have access to sophisticated equipment to steal locking wheel nuts but fears that keys for such security systems may be reproducible.

A spokesman for Mr Mann’s office said the MP will not allow this incident to restrict his campaigning activity - including his ‘continued opposition’ to police cuts in Bassetlaw.

“He is now calling on motoring organisations to audit security devices in order to reassure the general public and is publicising his traumatic experience in order to alert other motorists,” she said.

“He has already been alerted to other incidents of locking nuts being removed but nobody appears to have had the theft of the wheel nuts camouflaged in this way.”