§ Mr. David PorterTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement on the number of road tax offences reported by police to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, Swansea in the past year; how many were brought to prosecution; and what was done with those cases not prosecuted.
§ Mr. Key[holding answer 28 March 1994]: The number of vehicles reported to the DVLA by the police for alleged vehicle excise duty offences in 1992–93 was 1.8 million. Some 435,000 evaders were penalised, of which 242,000 settled out of court and 193,000 were successfully prosecuted. A further 180,000 evaders were encouraged to relicense their vehicles promptly as a direct result of enforcement activity. In a large proportion of the remaining cases, subsequent checks of the DVLA vehicle register revealed that the vehicles were in fact licensed and no offence had been committed. Other cases were not completed because of defects in offence reports, more than one report being received for the same offence, problems in tracking down offenders, difficulties in serving summonses and availability of resources.