Britain’s broken number plate system is today laid bare by a Daily Mail investigation which found official suppliers selling plates invisible to road cameras.

Ministers have been warned a wildly unregulated car registration regime is being exploited across the country by thousands of criminals and unscrupulous motorists.

As many as one in 15 cars are now feared to be fitted with so-called ‘ghost plates’, designed to evade detection by automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras.

It is feared their explosion in popularity has created a grave national security risk which could allow terrorists to slip through the net - and is already being exploited by grooming gangs.

Our reporter was able to buy a set of ghost plates from a DVLA-registered supplier, which failed to make any checks to verify they were actually the car’s registered owner.

The plates boasted so-called 4D raised lettering, which experts say road cameras struggle to read properly - and can make them effectively invisible to surveillance.

But researchers from Cranfield University found another layer of stealth when they tested the Mail’s plates in a specialist lab, with all but one character made of transparent material.

Startling images showed the plates appear blank apart from a single letter when photographed in anything other than dazzling daylight.

Dr Stuart Barnes, who analysed the plates for the Mail, said: ‘These are true ghost plates that use a special material intended to be invisible to most ANPR cameras operating at night.

‘To the naked eye, the characters look the same as on any other number plate, so it’s difficult to identify ghost plates just by looking at them.

‘You can only see the difference when you view them through an ANPR-type camera.’

This would make them illegal to use on the roads, despite our reporter obtaining them through a supplier listed on the national register and the plates bearing full road-legal markings.

A second set of 4D plates bought by the Mail from a separate supplier - again without any checks - were found to have thinned characters ‘which could potentially confuse an ANPR camera’ when photographed, according to the academics.

Both suppliers are now facing investigation by the DVLA following a tip-off from the Mail.

The Government is being urged to tighten up the law to explicitly ban plates using so-called 3D and 4D characters, which, because of a strange loophole, are not currently illegal to sell.

Sarah Coombes MP, who has been campaigning for tougher penalties for ghost plates, said: ‘This Daily Mail investigation shows just how broken the UK’s number plate system is.

‘It’s far too easy to buy dodgy illegal plates and criminals and dangerous car racers are using them every day to evade the law.

‘This number plate wild west is great for criminals and terrible for the rest of us.

‘We urgently need stricter penalties for those caught with ghost plates and much tighter controls and background checks on the people selling number plates in the first place.’

The ease with which the Mail was able to obtain illegal number plates from an official supplier exposes several serious flaws in how Britain regulates its roads.

Almost uniquely in the West, Britain allows anyone to become an official number plate supplier by paying a one-off fee of just £40, without any kind of criminal background check.

A recent report from MPs revealed there are now an ‘eye-watering’ 34,455 suppliers - four times the number of petrol stations in the UK - and the system was ‘wide open to abuse’.

Convicted fraudsters and criminals linked to ‘to murder, firearms, drugs, robbery and violent assault’ have been found among the authorised suppliers by trading standards investigators.

Against this backdrop sits a system with virtually no rule enforcement.

The DVLA only employs ‘five or six’ staff to audit the rapidly expanding number of number plate sellers, leading to warnings the market is ‘largely unregulated’.

When the Mail began its own investigation, the sheer brazenness with which some companies advertised their products as ‘ghost plates’ indicated how little they feared being caught.

With just a few clicks, an order was placed and the plates soon arrived in the post, despite no checks being made by the seller.

Failing to verify car ownership can have serious consequences, as it allows criminals to clone number plates for cars they do not own and rack up fines for innocent motorists.

The plates ordered by our reporter used the fictitious registration ‘DM17 GTZ’, which includes letters from the acronym of the Mail’s parent group, the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT).

The suppliers appeared not to notice the possible link between the number plates and the Daily Mail - despite the shipping address being our London newsroom.

It was expected the plates would likely be invisible to cameras simply because the raised characters create shadows that can make them hard to distinguish.

But when one set were tested at Cranfield University, it became clear the characters were not the only thing capable of frustrating road cameras.

Six of the seven letters were made from material that became transparent under infrared light, which ANPR relies on at night or in low visibility.

‘The characters fully disappear under infrared illumination,’ Dr Barnes said.

Although the supplier did not advertise this openly - saying they were simply 4D plates - it appears they knew how the product would likely be used and constructed accordingly.

The surging popularity of ghost plates is already causing a headache for police, with MPs finding they are now being used by grooming gangs and organised crime syndicates.

The Met Police are increasingly concerned terrorists could exploit what they called ‘a critical vulnerability for national security’.

But critics warn ordinary motorists also have an ‘incentive’ to obtain ghost plates due to controversial green policies like London’s camera-enforced Ulez zone.

A report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Transport Safety called for an ‘overhaul’ of the registration plate sale system, including a ban on 4D and 3D number plates.

A spokesman for the DVLA said: ‘There are strict laws in place which demand number plate suppliers are properly registered with DVLA, and robust identification standards for buyers.

‘DVLA works with police and Trading Standards to enforce these strict rules, and we will investigate any reports of suppliers failing to comply with the law.

‘On top of this, there is a review on the current standards on number plates which aims to ban production of plates that are specifically designed to evade Automatic Number Plate recognition cameras.’