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.

The 'true ghost plates' obtained by the Mail were almost entirely invisible when photographed under infrared light, which is used by road cameras at night or in low visibility

The plate also appeared mainly blank when photographed in partial lighting - due to transparent material being used on six of the seven letters 

It was only when photographed in dazzling daylight that the other characters on the number plates could be seen at all 

The ghost plates had so-called 4D lettering with characters raised off the flat surface, which can confuse road cameras by creating shadows and distortions

Daily Mail reporter Jack Hardy was able to obtain the ghost plates through an official DVLA-registered supplier, without any checks being carried out

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.