BRITAIN’S top traffic policeman is pushing through plans to create a national network of roadside spy cameras that will be able to track the movements of motorists around the clock.

Meredydd Hughes wants the cameras to be installed every 400 yards on motorways, as well as at supermarkets, petrol stations and in town centres.

They are designed to crack down on uninsured driving, road tax evasion and stolen cars, but will also monitor millions of law-abiding drivers.

Several thousand cameras have gone up and fines imposed on motorists will be used to expand the network. The new cameras are harder to spot than speed cameras because they are not painted in bright colours.

Hughes, head of roads policing at the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said he planned for automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras to be erected “every 400 yards along the motorway”. In one trial, on the M42, near Birmingham, they would initially enforce variable speed limits, and then be used to tackle more serious crime.

“Where we install CCTV systems, we will also install ANPR,” said Hughes, the chief constable of South Yorkshire police. “There are lots of plans to use all the existing camera systems we can. The aim is to deny criminals the use of the roads.”

An Acpo strategy document, seen by The Sunday Times, makes the controversial suggestion that every ANPR “intercept officer” should aim to issue at least 310 fixed-penalty notices a year.

Details of any vehicle passing a camera will be stored in a database for at least two years — even if the owner has not committed an offence.

Hughes’s model for the rest of Britain is the “complete system” around the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield. “Every vehicle coming into that environment is checked on the ANPR database. Police officers monitor this in real time.”

The national operation will be overseen from a new control centre in Hendon, north London, which will be able to process as many as 50m number plates a day by the end of 2006.

The Acpo strategy document describes the centre, which will open next April, as “the basis of a 24x7 national vehicle movement database”.

Officers investigating crimes will eventually be able to access the information from computers anywhere in the UK, although they will require clearance from senior managers.

ANPR is being used in Northampton and will soon be operating in Newcastle. Similar cameras are also used to enforce the congestion charge in London, although they are not currently used to target uninsured or other such errant drivers.

The cameras are not only linked to the police national computer, but also to the DVLA database, which allows officers to identify vehicles that are not registered or taxed.

Last week the network was linked to a database of 2m uninsured cars. From next month police will be able to crosscheck automatically a number plate with a list of vehicles without a valid MOT certificate.

Police have found that uninsured drivers and those without a valid tax disc are disproportionately involved in other criminal activity. Arrest rates through ANPR have increased by up to 1,000%.

Each police force has at least one ANPR “intercept” team, which typically consists of a sergeant and six constables.

Traditionally, they have operated further up the road from a mobile ANPR camera unit, stopping cars that are flagged up on one of the databases.

An increasing number of ANPR cameras are now being installed at fixed sites. “There are ANPR cameras on every motorway in the UK — at strategic points,” said John Dean, Acpo’s national ANPR co-ordinator. “We are hoping to have a good nationwide coverage within the next 12 months.”

The move has raised concerns among civil liberties campaigners. “Big national databases have joined sweeping police powers and ever more criminal offences as a new panacea of policing,” said Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty.

Dean, however, defended the ANPR network. “People say ‘Why are you spending all this time catching people going three miles over the speed limit when you should be catching criminals?’” he said. “This is exactly what ANPR does.”