THE son of a disqualified boat transporter has been refused an HGV licence after the Traffic Commissioner for Scotland voiced fears that he was setting up the business as a front for his parents.

Andrew Adams, of Blackwood in South Lanarkshire, applied for an operator's licence to use a 44-tonne arctic lorry to transport boats and caravans around the UK, Ireland and continental Europe.

The truck is currently registered to his father, Alistair Adams, who was disqualified from holding an LGV licence for three years in 2009 in relation to breaches involving his company, Euroboat Transport. Subsequent applications to have the licence restored have also been rejected.

Mr Adams' mother, Vari Adams, who ran Euroboat with her husband, was also stripped of her operator's licence indefinitely in 2009 over "loss of repute and professional competence".

Andrew Adams, 29, insisted during a public inquiry in Edinburgh that his parents had nothing to do with the proposed licence application and did not consider his father to be a bad influence. He insisted his parents were now living in Bulgaria.

The inquiry heard that Mr Adams wanted to set up his own haulage business buying, selling and repairing boats, and moving boats and other cargo to continental Europe and Ireland as well as around Britain.

He said he also wanted to transport and deal in caravans and that he did not want to work as an agency driver when he "could make the same money or more working for himself".

However, the Traffic Commissioner for Scotland, Joan Aitken, refused his HGV application because she feared he would use it to run a "phoenix", or front, company on behalf of his parents.

In her judgement, she said Mr Adams was the "son of two people who have caused great concern to Traffic Commissioners and their Deputies over a very long period of time" and that the couple were not really settled in Bulgaria but using it as a "correspondence address" only.

Miss Aitken, the chief watchdog for the public and commercial transport industry in Scotland, said: “Without doubt it would suit the Adams family to have an operator’s licence within the family in Great Britain again. If I were to grant this licence it would be nigh on impossible in practical terms to stop either Mr Alistair Adams or Mrs Vari Adams and their activities from operating under the lea of the operator licence currently applied for.”

Miss Aitken said his parents had over the years "shown themselves to be defiant and non compliant, not only in their behaviours and conduct, but also in their attitude" and that their son appeared to be a "chip off the old block".

The hearing for Andrew Adams came weeks after his father also appeared before a Traffic Commissioner inquiry in Edinburgh in a failed bid to have an impounded vehicle returned.

The inquiry heard that examiners from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) impounded a vehicle owned by A Adams Haulage Ltd on June 5 2014 in Lesmahagow after it was spotted by police transporting a boat without a valid operator’s licence.

Alistair Adams said he had a Bulgarian operator's licence but insisted he was mostly moving boats on a private, individual basis because he lived in them, and insisted this meant he did not require an operator's licence.

This was rejected by Miss Aitken, and the inquiry heard that the Bulgarian licence had been suspended anyway.