PENDLE'S MP Gordon Prentice has called for vehicle insurance to be displayed in windscreens to drive illegal motorists off the road.

The Labour backbencher has called on the Home Office to introduce windscreen insurance discs after saying the cost of accidents involving young uninsured drivers each year was £500 million.

And Mr Prentice has also demanded the fixed penalty fine for people caught driving with no insurance to be raised from £200.

Mr Prentice said nearly 500,000 people were prosecuted for having no insurance of which three quarters were found guilty. Of those 15 per cent are banned from driving, he added.

However, despite the fixed penalty being £200, Mr Prentice said the average fine handed out was just £169.

He said by raising the fine limit and making motorists display their insurance in windscreens the number of people driving illegally would be reduced.

Mr Prentice said: "So far so good, but I'm not happy that the fixed penalty fine of £200 introduced in 2003 hasn't been increased to a more realistic level.

"Incredibly, the average fine for this offence was even lower at £169.

"This bears little relationship to the cost of insuring and taxing a vehicle, so people will just take the chance of not getting caught.

"And it is people driving without insurance who are statistically by far the most likely to have accidents."

Similar schemes operate in Australia, France and Jersey. In Jersey the disc does not prove the driver is insured but only that the registered owner of the vehicle has taken out insurance for themselves and authorised drivers.

It is illegal to have a disc but not display it and an insurance certificate is still needed. Mr Prentice said even though the disc would not prove if a driver was correctly insured it would deter uninsured drivers from getting in cars.

He added: "I have asked the Home Office to consider the merits of windscreen insurance discs to combat uninsured driving.

"Even if they don't prove that a vehicle's driver is correctly insured I'm sure they would have a useful effect. However, the Home Office prefers to improve Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology linked to the Motor Insurance Database."