A hypothetical (at the moment!) question for you all

Please don't insult me , I'm giving you my opinion based on product knowledge and my understanding of the MOT inspection manual.

 I can't believe what I'm reading, A braking system component inappropriately repaired or modified.
pegs and holes ? It's in the manual.

I am sometimes amazed and horrified at the deteriation that I find on brake pipes and wonder how they passed the test the previous year without even an advisory, and I have questioned my own standards thinking perhaps I'm too strict, but on the reassurance of my quality controllers advice that any pitting is a fail, however only yesterday my colleague and quality controller was testing a W reg S40 Volvo and moved forward from inspecting the car on the ramp to the roller brake tester he encountered a brake pipe failure whilst taking the front wheels to lockout.
He returned the car to the ramp to see how he could have missed this defect only to find that all the pipes had been coated with what appeared to be a gloss type paint preventing a thorough inspection.
I would guess that most MOT stations will have suffered brake hydraulic failure whilst conducting a Roller Brake Test for similar reasons due to concealed corrosion or hydraulic components above a fuel tank etc.
I can tell you that I give a sigh of relief when this happens in the test bay and not after the car has left the premises with a new certificate.
The implications and responsibility that we face with testing cars of a certain age are huge and brake pipes should not be considered with a blasé attitude.

The owner can pay me or someone else to fix it or he can even do it himself, the test will be abandoned at that point as being dangerous, the cause of the fault is not me its a failure due to serious deteriation. It will not be repaired by me free of charge.
I may agree to a mediated decision before any court action but will cross that bridge when or if it ever occurs.

Section 3.5 Inadequate repairs - only applies to Mechanical Brake Components.

There is no similar RfR for brake pipes, the MOI and RfR for brake pipes are listed in Section 3.6

It's in the Manual.

I beg to differ www.mot-testing.service.gov.uk/documents/manuals/m4s03000601.htm

Stealth, I'm surprised that you would have to refer to the manual on such a critical vehicle topic as this, and also as there is no black bar suggesting the manual has been updated from an earlier date in this respect then I wonder what copy you have on your Dropbox account .
This forum would benefit more on topics such as this if direct reference is made to the MOT manual in discussions and perhaps earlier conclusion can be found.

I'm not being down on you and I agree with virtually everything you've said there, but shouldn't your colleague have already seen, and maybe decided to advise, that the pipes had been thickly coated? At least the failure might not have been such a shock then even though I know he couldn't have failed them. Unless, just perhaps, some of the coating sort of fell off during the test?
Other than that though brake pipes can be very worrying. Apart from the difficulties in assessing them a lot are hidden. I don't have access to the manual just now (card secure at home but me at work) but I don't think it's as simple as any pitting being a fail. Going from memory we're supposed to be able to say that the wall thickness has reduced by  a certain amount (half I think) although how we can truly assess that is beyond me. I'm sure we all do what I do. No corrosion = pass. Slight corrosion = pass and advise. Anything more than that = fail. And that's the gist of what I was told on my last refresher course.

I don't know the steel vs copper price

But it's definitely going to add up to several thousand £/$/€ over say 200,000 cars