Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of the abolition of vehicle tax discs on the number of drivers avoiding paying road tax.

Every two years the Department for Transport conducts a roadside survey to evaluate the level of vehicle excise duty compliance. The last survey took place in June 2015, eight months after the paper tax disc was abolished and the results were announced in November 2015. The survey estimated that 98.6% of vehicles were licensed, a drop of 0.8% from the previous survey in 2013. The next survey is due to take place in June of this year.

The DVLA operates a comprehensive package of measures to tackle vehicle excise duty evasion. These measures range from reminder letters, penalties and court prosecutions through to the use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras, wheel-clamping and the removal of unlicensed vehicles. The DVLA aims to make vehicle excise duty easy to pay but hard to avoid, regularly reviewing and refining processes to encourage compliance and deliver a robust enforcement regime.

In the third quarter of 2014 before the tax disc was abolished, there were 36,922,049 licensed vehicles. In the third quarter of 2016 there were 38,440,125 licensed vehicles.