Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of non-compliant vehicle registration plates on the enforcement of motor insurance requirements.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and other Government departments to improve the identification and enforcement of number plate crime, including the use of cloned and ghost number plates.

On-road enforcement of number plate offences and insurance requirements is a matter for the police. However, the DVLA works with the Motor Insurers Bureau (MIB) to identify uninsured vehicles by comparing the DVLA’s vehicle records against those held on the MIB’s Motor Insurance Database.

The Department welcomes the recent report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Transport Safety and is considering the report’s recommendations. Options to support more robust application and audit processes, which would enable tighter checks on number plate suppliers are also being considered.

The Government has set out its intention in the Road Safety Strategy to consult on addressing the growing problem of illegal number plates, including ‘ghost’ number plates.