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One in 20 drivers is dodging road tax: Influx of foreign motorists sends losses soaring to £214m
Last updated at 16:07pm on 22.01.08
Influx: Foreign motorists have fuelled a rise in the number of road tax dodgers
One in 20 vehicles is now untaxed, costing law-abiding citizens at least £214million last year.
Yet the Government and the Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency admit they have no idea how big the problem is, says a highly critical report by Parliamentary watchdogs.
The road tax system could easily become "a complete laughing stock", warns the Public Accounts Committee.
Evasion of Vehicle Excise Duty rose to 5 per cent in 2006, up from 3.6 per cent in 2005.
Among motorcyclists, the evasion rate increased from 30 per cent to 38 per cent.
Road tax from 35million cars raises about £5billion a year, although only a fraction of this goes into transport.
Yet many foreign drivers, increasingly from Eastern Europe, do not bother to register their cars as they must by law after six months.
And if they commit motoring crimes they cannot be traced and will rarely be pursued by police or the authorities.
Persistent evaders avoid paying tax, parking tickets, speeding fines and congestion charges. Some copy or "clone" number plates from vehicles of lawabiding drivers.
The problem has become so severe that ministers have abandoned targets for tackling the dodgers.
The DVLA admitted it will not be able to cut evasion by £70million a year by the end of 2007-08, as it had intended.
The MP watchdogs' report said: "The increasing number of foreign-registered vehicles is a relatively new factor in VED evasion. Neither the DVLA nor the Department of Transport could provide any data on the scale of foreign-registered vehicles evading VED.
"They also do not know whether a foreign vehicle has been in the UK for six months as, to do so with the certainty necessary for enforcement, they would have to record every entry into the country."
Both the Transport Department and the DVLA had been "surprised" by the increase in the evasion.
"This calls into question the effectiveness of the agency's enforcement approach and whether it understands patterns of evasion well enough to design fully effective counter-measures," the report adds.
Ministers and the DVLA admitted to MPs they had no data on the extent of cloned or false plates.
This was a "weakness" along with failure to cross-reference information and work more closely with the police and local authorities.
The number of "persistent evaders" fell by only 4 per cent, from 970,800 in 2002 to 930,000 in 2005.
More than 35,000 sets of number plates are stolen each year but that is just a fraction of "cloned" cars driving around with false or stolen identities.
MPs suggest that microchips should be planted in number plates to identify the dodgers, while motoring groups say more police patrols are the answer, rather than computer records which are inadequate.
Edward Leigh MP, chairman of the accounts committee, said: "Motorists and motorcyclists who refuse to pay road tax are stealing from law-abiding taxpayers.
"Nearly 40 per cent of motorcycles are now unlicensed. Large parts of the biking community are cocking a snook at the law."
Sheila Rainger, of the RAC Foundation, said: "Motorists driving without tax are also more likely to be driving uninsured and without an MoT certificate.
"Responsible motorists are not only picking up the tab for evaders, they are also being put at risk by them."
Reader views (3)
An easy problem to solve, if the government got off its bottom. First collect vehicle tax through the insurers, who would issue a combined tax/insurance disk with a built-in remote-readable microchip. Then have some revenue enforcement teams with equipment to scan all vehicles passing an (invisible) checkpoint, and radio the offenders' details ahead to the police down the road. Ditto give all parking wardens scanners. Any uninsured and untaxed car would be immediately forfeited (a lesser penalty could be applied for the merely forgetful). Forfeited cars sold for the taxpayers' profit or scrapped as appropriate.
Foreign cars issued with a free six-month temporary disk at the port after a check of insurance documents. Same rules as home drivers when it expires (loss of car) so no way to hide behind foreign plates. Stolen disks would be no more use than stolen Oyster cards - they'd be on the hot list as soon as the theft was reported.
Problem solved, I think.
- Nigel, London
As someone who has been hit by an uninsured, untaxed motorcyclist who was fined 3 points and £140 but then was in turn sued by the motorcyclist for £3,000 for "bruising" even though the police had stated it was his fault this doesn't surprise me at all.
- Anon, London
This is a direct consequence of the proliferation of enforcement cameras and the decimation of police traffic patrols. Couple that with the rip-off prices in the UK for anything connected with driving legally and you will be unsurprised at this increase.
Getting an MOT used to be pretty straight forward, but thanks to the obssession with data collection that our useless government has it is now a chore. Little wonder that many don't bother.
- Keith Lonsdale, Doncaster
