Road Safety Bill [HL]

The Committee will be surprised to hear that I support my noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux if, and only if, the number plate were much more sophisticated. If it had an electronic chip, some sort of tag, then there would be much to commend the noble Lord’s amendment. There is a difficulty with the last part of his amendment, which suggests that the number of a stolen number plate should be voided. Of course, people pay an awful lot of money for a cherished number plate. I suspect that if they paid £20,000 for the number plate ““WE1””, for instance, and then that plate was stolen and they lost its identity, that would be a bit of a problem.