Clause 17 - Register of registration plate suppliers
Vehicles (Crime) Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Charles Clarke (Minister of State, Home Office; Norwich South, Labour)
I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mr. Chidgey) in welcoming you to the Chair, Mr. Sayeed. We had a good sitting this morning, and we are delighted that you are here.
We have discussed much of the substance of the clause. It makes it mandatory for the Secretary of State—which in practice means the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency—to establish and maintain a register of registration plate suppliers. The clause allows for regulations to be made to set out the details to be held on the register. Those details could include the addresses of all premises from which registration plates are supplied. The Secretary of State is obliged to disclose information from the register to anyone who requests it, and may set a fee for such requests—we have clarified that it is only a ``may'' and not a ``must''—and the process must be established by regulation to be debated in the House. We have also stated that we expect large parts of the register to be available on the web, and therefore to be available free of charge to any citizen.