Vehicle Registration Marks Bill

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this Second Reading debate. I am sure that all noble Lords will agree that the Bill is worth while in making the process of transferring personalised and cherished number plates more straightforward for the buyer and the seller. I am grateful to the Minister and his officials for their help. The Bill will allow a registered keeper to dispose of their entitlement to a vehicle number when it is first put on retention. This will ease the administrative burden on the cherished number industry and on individual motorists without—this is most important—compromising the current legislative safeguards against fraud. The noble Viscount, Lord Simon, and my noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux raised the issue of misrepresented number plates. The law is quite clear and the Government have made some desirable changes, which the Minister outlined. I share noble Lords’ concerns, but the Bill is not designed to deal with that mischief, as I am sure they recognise. However, I do not understand why the police do not do more to counter such behaviour. It is an obvious offence and, as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, described, it interferes with the ANPR system. The noble Viscount, Lord Simon, talked about show plates. He rightly identifies the problem. However, our current plates are simple to manufacture; there is nothing special about them. I will return to the point of the designer plates in a moment. My noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux in effect questioned whether the system of the manufacture and supply of number plates is fit for purpose. I have already expressed my views to the House on the provisions of the Vehicles (Crime) Act on a number of occasions. I believe that the requirement to register number plate suppliers performs no useful purpose, but has severe downsides, such as increasing the theft of number plates. When we last debated the issue, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, could not come up with a counter-argument. The engine management computer is the brain and the soul of the vehicle. In future, it should be possible to have it emit the identity of the vehicle. That facility could be used for a number of desirable purposes. Since the engine management computer is an expensive item, it could easily be strictly controlled by the manufacturers’ main agents only, but this of course is something for the future. The difficulty with my noble friend’s approach is that it will always be difficult to prevent plates from being removed from the vehicle. I read about the so-called theft-resistant number plates, but they have been made desirable after the implementation of the Vehicles (Crime) Act, and the problem is that the more theft-resistant a number plate is made, the more damage the criminals will do to a car in removing it. In addition, maintenance procedures could become more difficult. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, also expressed concerns about the current systems of supplying number plates. He rightly believes that crooks could still be involved despite the provisions of the Vehicles (Crime) Act. I can obtain any number plate that any noble Lord cares to specify, and I am not a criminal. There is no point in requiring number plate suppliers to be registered unless the number plate is chipped, but we are some way away from that. I look forward to debating all the issues, if noble Lords desire. On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.