Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
DEPARTMENT FOR
TRANSPORT & DVLA
17 OCTOBER 2007
Q20 Chairman: Mr Bennett, electronically
it is quite easy to skip a month's payment, is it not? If you
actually take it into a post office it is quite difficult to skip
a month, but if you renew it electronically and renewed it electronically
every six months, if you knew this, every six months you could
skip a month and what would you do about it?
Mr Bennett: Broadly speaking,
it is not just an electronic issue. In broad terms we do not begin
to enforce remotely using CR (Continuous Registration) at the
moment until after the second month has elapsed, if I can put
it that way, so we play safe, particularly in the early days of
Continuous Registration, because we do not want to create major
problems with the public. You are absolutely right, with the electronic
there is always the end of the month rush that can cause this.
One of the things we are certainly looking at doing is reducing
remote enforcement to the one month to stop the one month skippers
but we have not yet exercised that. It is an issue. On road enforcement
already occurs after one month has elapsed since expiry.
Q21 Chairman: If we look at this
in a year's time, the skipping a month will have been solved,
will it?
Dr Hickey: There is a paper being
prepared at the moment, as recommended in the NAO's report, to
look at the details of how to do this, the cost, when it could
be implemented, all of that stuff, and that is due to come to
the Department next month. We will look at that but subject to
it being practicable, affordable and all those sorts of things,
of course that is something we ought to address.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
Q22 Dr Pugh: Can I address most of
my remarks to the problem of the one million or so cars that are
obviously untaxed, uninsured, rogue drivers, if I can put it like
that, and in particular the issue of false number plates, which
is the greatest way of evading things because when the number
plate is picked up it may well correspond with a number plate
owned legitimately by some perfectly well insured, well taxed
individual. What I want to try and get to is how well do you understand
this specific problem because it is the clearest way of evading?
Dr Hickey: With the number plates
particularly.
Q23 Dr Pugh: With having a false
number plate, a cloned number plate. I have asked the Government,
incidentally, the question as to the extent of this problem and
they are unable to tell me how many cars there are of this nature
on the roads. In terms of cars with false number plates, how many
of them are carrying number plates which are plausible to that
car and how many are just easily detectable when found, in other
words it is a number plate belonging to a completely different
model? I say this as somebody who has had my car stolen and returned
and found it had a number plate of an appropriate model and an
almost appropriate age. In terms of people doing this kind of
thing, how smart are they?
Mr Bennett: Mr Hickey may want
to answer this as well but, as far as I am aware, there are no
stats on the specific numbers of this because it is collected
through a wide range of different areas. Our stance with number
plates has been to effectively close down the opportunities for
criminals to get hold of number plates. We have put in registered
number plate suppliers so that you can no longer just go into
a shop and buy a number plate, you have to produce a driving licence
to prove who you are, you have to produce a V5 to prove that you
have that vehicle and if, in fact, the plate supplier is found
to be working against the legislation then we can take away the
licence. That has been extended now to Scotland and Northern Ireland.
We have done quite a lot to extend number plate supply control.
Q24 Dr Pugh: In terms of the people
who are picked up with false number plates, how many of them have
gone to the trouble of using a bona fide number plate that
could be for that car?
Mr Bennett: We do not have those
figures.
Q25 Dr Pugh: You do not know?
Mr Bennett: We do not know.
Q26 Dr Pugh: Something else that
happened to me was my son got charged by TfL with being on the
wrong side of a yellow box at the wrong time, I think. The only
thing was although a car had his number plate on, he was not in
London and the car had never actually been to London and we had
quite a long discussion with TfL in order to persuade them that
this was so. Clearly that happens to a number of people, apart
from my son, and it will happen to people when they are picked
up by speeding cameras and so on, so an amount of evidence will
be put through the system. What is that evidence showing us at
the moment? Do you look at that evidence?
Mr Bennett: That is what I am
saying, we do not get a collected amount of evidence. You make
a very good point and it would be very good if you could pull
together this evidence from right across. What we have largely
done is provided the public with a mechanism for dealing with
that. For example, in your son's case, he could easily invest
in plates that will not come off his vehicle.
Q27 Dr Pugh: These had not come off
his vehicle because he had the plates and another vehicle had
the plates. In fact, there are probably several cars driving round
London at the moment that have the same plates.
Mr Bennett: But a lot of people
are losing their plates and what we have done is put that in place
to actually stop them being taken off and put on other cars and
that is something we have tried to do to help the public.
Q28 Dr Pugh: Surely the courts have
a number of cases which are thrown out of court because the person
can prove when they were alleged to have been speeding at point
A they could not possibly have been at point A. These are statistics
of fact. Does anybody record it or collate it?
Mr Bennett: We know how many plates
broadly are stolen per year, the big problem with the question
you ask is 35,000 sets of plates were stolen, so in terms of the
plates stolen that is 35,000 but the problem is we do not know
how many of the vehicles are wearing false plates. There is a
very difficult issue here because you have got to know how many
there are and how they are being used and where they are being
used and collect that data. We have half of the issue for you,
I think.
Dr Hickey: Your point is absolutely
right that it is one of the vulnerabilities. Linking with the
Chairman's point earlier, the amount of enforcement which is based
on number plates is going up, you are quite right. The police
would very much echo the concern that this is a vulnerability
in the system.
Q29 Dr Pugh: It is a key vulnerability.
If a police car is following me they can simply look at the number
plate and if I am a legitimate driver they can work out the ownership,
the insurance status, the MOT and the current tax status without
any further effort, can they not, within a few seconds.
Dr Hickey: Exactly. Is there a
straightforward easy answer to this question? No. The thing that
was announced last year was the standard for theft-resistant number
plates which certainly would not solve all problems and clearly
the more sophisticated criminal uses higher levels of technology.
There is now a standard out there for theft-resistant number plates
which, shall we say, for the more casual criminal, as distinct
from the highly sophisticated one, makes it more difficult to
start stealing and cloning, and so on. At the moment that is a
voluntary standard, it was only agreed and announced by the Government
last year. There is an issue about the take-up of these more theft-resistant
number plates.
Q30 Dr Pugh: In terms of the cars
we pick up with forged number plates or cloned number plates,
how many of them simultaneously have a tax disc that has also
been forged?
Dr Hickey: I have not got that
number, I am afraid.
Q31 Dr Pugh: This is a key problem
here yet nobody seems to have the statistics or information on
it.
Dr Hickey: There are certainly
statistics about the overlap between tax discs and insurance and
other forms of criminality, so the likelihood is high. The point
behind your question is absolutely right.
Q32 Dr Pugh: In terms of proactive
work, you must have a huge computer that tells you all sorts of
interesting things about us all. I assume that somebody who does
not want to pay tax probably is not going to go to the trouble
of insuring themselves either and you must watch the narrative
or the development history of a particular car and every year
there must be so many cars that simply disappear off the system
and they will not show up as scrapped vehicles because that has
to be recorded too. What is the figure for that?
Mr Bennett: We are talking about
two different things. Insurance is a different thing. On the vehicle
side, for example in a year, take the period of the survey, 1,272,000
cases were issued on CR, so we will chase up 1,272,000 people
because they have either not taxed their vehicle or SORN'd their
vehicle. So there is 1.2 million that we chase through and take
through the first stage of fining and so on.[1]
Q33 Dr Pugh: As somebody who has been
chased in that respect, because I was a bit late putting the SORN
in, how many of those have simply not got round to doing it?
Mr Bennett: The people who have
not SORN'd, offhand I have not got the figure here, I am sure
I could get that in a moment but quite a number do not SORN and
they came out of the survey. The bottom line is we take about
1.2 million right the way through chasing them through CR with
reminder letters, we then take them to court, go through debt
collection, there is a whole series of steps that take place.
Those are the people who are on the register, of course. The problem
is we cannot send reminders to people when we do not know who
the keeper is, and that is the other side of the problem we were
talking about earlier where, of course, we do not know who to
chase and who to send the reminder to. There are two sides to
this problem.
Q34 Dr Pugh: The figure for the mystery
number of cars that drop off each year that are not SORN'd, that
are not scrapped, that are still being chased up, is about what?
Mr Bennett: There are two problems
here, there is pay and compliance. If you look at vehicles that
have not paid or are not compliant, because they could have paid
and are compliant or vice versa, you are looking at something
like 618,000 vehicles. So you have got across the board right
away, after going through all the process, 618,000 that have not
paid. Of those, 352,000 have not paid and are not compliant and
181,000 have paid and are not compliant, bizarrely. So they will
pay the fine but they then will not relicence or SORN their vehicle.
You have got a mixed problem here. It depends what your tendencies
are, of course, if you are going to evade.
Q35 Dr Pugh: My last question is
about foreign cars. Foreign cars have to have a tax disc after
six months, do they not? Who chases them when they do not get
a tax disc after six months, assuming they are still using British
roads?
Mr Bennett: We went to a conference
last week with police, the Fire Service, local authorities and
ourselves and foreign cars are a big problem, as I am sure you
are aware.
Q36 Dr Pugh: How big a problem?
Mr Bennett: We do not know. Again,
I am sorry to say we do not know. We do not know for sure. We
are trying to get to a situation here because the difficulty with
foreign cars is you have to see them three times. You are quite
right, you have to hit them when they have done the six months,
so you have got to find them to issue a warning notice then you
have got to catch them after that point in time to take further
action. You have to have a database which tracks right the way
through against the foreign vehicle licence number, which is quite
difficult.
Dr Hickey: It is actually more
difficult than that even because the six months (in 12) starts
ticking from when you arrive in this country and if you go abroad
again, after, say, three or four months, the clock should start
ticking when you return (if you return after the 12 month period).
Strictly speaking, if you really, really wanted to crack down
on this absolutely 100% and so on we would have to start recording
every time a car enters the country.
Q37 Dr Pugh: So how many have you
cracked down on?
Dr Hickey: It is very limited
at the moment.
Q38 Mr Mitchell: I get the impression
from this report that you are an over-worked and understaffed
department plodding along happily in your own sweet Welsh way,
and that is a tribute to Don, with outdated systems and you are
not catching up with the situation where this kind of evasion,
as our Chairman said, is going to burgeon because of all the congestion
charges and cameras and so on and so forth. Is that a fair picture?
Mr Bennett: Well, I do not think
it is actually, no. We have to go back to where we came in. The
bigger issue for DVLA is we deal with largely tracking vehicles
from the record, that is fundamentally what we do and we are empowered
to do. For example, that is why we put in Electronic Vehicle Licensing
because it makes it easier for people to comply.
Q39 Mr Mitchell: You were surprised
at the scale of evasion by the roadside observations in 2006.
Mr Bennett: Yes.
1 Note by witness: If a vehicle is scrapped
but no notification of destruction is received at DVLA, the vehicle
does not drop off the system. The record remains live and the
registered keeper would still be liable for a CR penalty. We are
unable to provide an estimate of these cases, but the last JDI
survey of the vehicle underclass in 2005, estimated that vehicles
that have been falsely declared as scrapped, but still in use
form 6% of the vehicle underclass, roughly 57,000 vehicles. Back
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