§ Mr. JenkinTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions how many road vehicles in use in the UK(a) do not have an up-to-date road tax disc, (b) are not registered in the name of the present keeper of the vehicle and have not been so for more than one month and (c) do not have valid insurance. [98038]
692W
§ Mr. Hill[holding answer 10 November 1999]: The DETR has recently carried out its latest large scale survey of Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) evasion across the UK for all vehicle tax classes, the results of which will be published early next year. The last major survey in 1994 estimated that around 1.5 million vehicles in Great Britain did not have an up to date tax disc.
We are committed to tackling the problem of VED evasion and have introduced a number of measures to end this, including a national scheme to wheel-clamp and impound unlicensed vehicles seen on a public road.
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) holds details of the registered keeper of vehicles within its vehicle record database. At the end of June 1999, there were 327,640 cases out of some 28 million where the DVLA did not have the details of the registered keeper of a licensed vehicle. It is not possible to tell the number of cases for which this has been so for more than one month without running a prohibitively expensive scan of the database.
The DETR does not have information on the number of vehicles which do not have valid insurance.