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30/06/2009
Professor Stephen Hawking has blasted EU import duty on mobility scooters as a disgraceful attack on the disabled.
The wheelchair-bound Nobel laureate physicist is calling on the EU to cut its 10% tax on the vehicles when it reconsiders its position tomorrow.
Currently mobility scooters, which are exempt from tax when they are bought by disabled users, are classified in the same way as Formula One cars - as 'motor vehicles for the transport of persons', instead of 'carriages for disabled persons', the usual classification for wheelchairs.
This has seen the devices hit with a 10% tax since 2007, though the EU initially imposed the tax informally. They had previously been considered as equipment for the disabled, making them exempt from tax.
But tomorrow the EU is expected to officially adopt recommendations from the World Customs Organisation, which advises governments on setting import duties, to keep the tax in place.
Professor Hawking said: "A mobility scooter is a lifeline.
"To tax the most disadvantaged in this way is simply disgraceful."
Jim Dooley, chairman of the Mobility Bureau, which supplies the vehicles through charitable organisations, said that distributors had tried not to pass on the extra burden of tax to consumers, but that it was becoming harder in the recession.
"Enshrining this reclassification into law, binding the UK and other countries to this tax is just plain wrong," he said.
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