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Professor Fraser Sampson, the surveillance camera commissioner, said the ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) camera network’s three per cent error rate for reading car number plates meant there were “significant risks” of penalty notices being wrongly issued to innocent motorists.

In a letter to Transport Secretary Mark Harper Professor Sampson warned it could also be a breach of data protection laws through the misuse of inaccurate data, a problem that he said he has asked the Information Commissioner John Edwards to investigate.

He also warned the ANPR camera system, which covers some 15,400 roads or traffic lanes, was “staggeringly simple” for motorists to deceive either through using cloned plates or plastic “stealth” tape to hide the true owner’s registration number.

He said there was evidence that as many as one in 15 drivers may already be using anti-ANPR technology and this was likely to increase with the roll-out of more Ulez zones, traffic restrictions and new 20mph speed limits.