Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems in detecting vehicles using (a) cloned or (b) ghost number plates.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and other government departments to improve the identification and enforcement of number plate crime.

Officials are considering options to ensure more robust application and audit processes which would enable tighter checks on number plate suppliers. On-road enforcement of number plate offences is a matter for the police.

Officials are also considering potential options for making number plates more secure.

The DVLA is part of the British Standards Institute committee that has recently reviewed the existing number plate standard. The committee has proposed a number of amendments which are intended to stop the production of number plates with raised characters, often referred to as 3D or 4D number plates and will prevent easy access to plates with ‘ghost’ characteristics. The proposals will also prevent suppliers from adding acrylic letters and numbers to the surface of the number, meaning any finished number plate must be flat. The proposed changes have been subject to a public consultation which closed on 13 December 2025.

Standards on the use of automated number plate reader technology are a matter for the Home Office which issues guidance on its use as part of the National ANPR Standards for Policing and Law Enforcement.