It accounts for a fifth of all recorded offences and costs at least £3bn a year.The Transport minister David Jamieson said the crackdown on “car ringing” would form part of a package of anti-car crime measures planned for the next 18 months.He said: “Vehicle ringing affects the person whose vehicle is stolen and the unsuspecting buyer It is a widespread crime. Some criminals show remarkable ingenuity in trying to pass on stolen cars. The new vehicle identity check scheme will make a real difference.”Assistant Chief Constable George Pothecary, of Dorset police, said: “The ‘ringers’ need registration documents to profit from their crimes … the checks will deny these to them.”The Government is running a three-month consultation period and wants to introduce the scheme in April 2003..

In this increasingly fractured society, the model and actress Liz Hurley is not alone in facing motherhood outside the traditional nuclear family. The tabloids have dined out on the seductive story of the British beauty bedded by an American playboy millionaire, Steve Bing. Miss Hurley claims she became pregnant during the couple’s apparently short liaison. Now she must make her case in law like any other single mother. Fortunately for Hurley, Bing has agreed to a DNA test, an almost infallible means of resolving this issue.The Child Support Agency (CSA), the government body responsible for assessing, collecting and enforcing child maintenance, says most fathers confirm paternity when asked. In disputed cases the CSA offers discount DNA tests, with the cost refunded if results prove negative. Robin Spon-Smith, a barrister based at London family law chambers, 1 Mitre Court, says where paternity is in doubt “the court can make a direction for blood testing but the father cannot be compelled to comply.

However, adverse inferences can be drawn in these circumstances”.If fatherhood is established the man will, irrespective of the brevity of his relationship with the mother, incur shared liability for the child’s upbringing. This rule applies even if pregnancy occurred by “entrapment”. “No protestations that the woman said that she had taken precautions will let the man off the financial hook,” says Neil Russell, a matrimonial solicitor with Westminster firm BD Laddie. Russell says “proving that someone had lied would be difficult”. Effectively, courts are likely to be influenced by the fact that no contraception is foolproof. Moreover, even if the man did not intend to impregnate his partner, in performing sexual congress, he assumed a risk of this happening.Artificial insemination or test tube babies where the donor is a third party leave the long-term partner or husband responsible for their offspring as if the baby had been conceived naturally. Anonymous donors, though, owe no financial obligations to child or mother.If the DNA test proves that Bing is the father, he would under English law automatically become legally obliged to support his child up to the age of 16 and (if unmarried) up to the age of 19, if he or she remained in full-time education.The CSA is usually involved in all child maintenance cases where the adult who cares for the child receives benefits and in other instances where maintenance cannot be agreed.