Road tax evasion 'to cost £79 million'

Road tax evasion is set to cost the government around £79 million this year, figures from the Department for Transport (DfT) show.

This amounts to losing 1.5 per cent of total available revenue, although some will be recovered through DVLA enforcement or owners back-licensing their vehicles.

In total, the DfT believes 1.1 per cent of vehicles in Britain have not been registered for road tax, although this rises to 2.3 per cent in Northern Ireland.

Motorcyclists are the worst offenders with 6.5 per cent of bikes going untaxed in 2007 and nearly three in five had been untaxed for more than a year. Nearly one in five untaxed bikes had been wrongly declared off the road.

Drivers were most likely to be caught without road tax on minor urban roads while motorway users were most likely to have brought road tax.

The DfT was unable to trace the owners of more than one in ten untaxed vehicles.

The vast majority of figures for 2007 were collected through automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology, and the DfT argues the "substantial improvements" mean data cannot be easily compared with previous years.

Instead 2007's data should be used as a starting point for future comparisons, the government insists.

Nevertheless, the Liberal Democrats argue the figures show the government's new enforcement regime is failing to detect vehicle tax evaders.

Norman Baker, Lib Dem transport spokesman, said: "Why should law-abiding motorists subsidise those who seek to break the law?

"The DVLA must redouble its efforts to clamp down on tax evaders. Ministers must also increase vehicle duty for the most polluting vehicles to ensure the polluter pays."

The Lib Dems are also arguing for road pricing to replace road tax, which they claim would be fairer and harder to evade.