Suppose you drive a SORNed car to a pre-arranged MOT. No tax, but quite legal if it has insurance. I've done it.

So my take is the insurance company has no obligation on the tax front at all. All they care about is whether you filled in the proposal correctly and the vehicle is road-worthy.

A car does not have to be taxed to be insured but it does have to be insured at the time of purchase of the road fund licence.

No MOT does not invalidate insurance - although there have been atrtempts by a few insurers to make it a condition of insurance they have lost in court and with the Ombudsman.

An insurer will notmally pay a claim whether a vehicle has an MOT or not, but they can refuse to pay our (or deduct) if the vehicle is unroadworthy and particularly if the unroadworthiness contributes to the accident.

For example if a car is involved in an apparent non-fault accident but it emerges they ahd defective tyres and hence could not stop as quickly as they should have then that will have an impact on the outcome. However if a car is parked in the street with defective tyres and another vehicle runs into it then the tyres are unlikely to have any impact on the settlement.

MOTs do come into play in insurance cases but only in the settlement of write-offs, a car without an MOT being deemed less valuable than a car that has one.

Yes they will.

"its so simple you tax the car or have the garage tax the car before you pick it up its not so complicated is it."

If the vehicle is bought at auction it is quite impossible to have RFL for any vehicle unless there happens to be RFL left by the vendor, which is extremely rare. The auction sites usually require bought vehicles to be taken away on the day. So you either have to have trade plates, a tow truck or have it delivered. But the majority of private buyers end up driving away without RFL. So not so simple in this case. You only have to watch how many cars leave an auction site without RFL each auction day to see how widespread this problem for buyers is.

"I have never seen an auction that would not let you leave a car overnight"

You're right. But they don't like it. That's why they charge if it's not of their premises within 24 hrs. Along with other fees, many private buyers would rather drive away same day.

Don't feed the solicitroll.