Industry bodies have welcomed the Government’s move towards continuous enforcement of car insurance regulations.

The new proposals, tabled as amendments to the Road Safety Bill, will make it an offence to own a car which is neither insured nor registered as off the road.

The Government says the police will identify and prosecute uninsured motorists using a database of all registered vehicles in the UK. Drivers who do not have insurance and have not registered their vehicles as ‘off the road’ will be fined and ultimately have their cars crushed.

Repeated surveys have put the cost to insured drivers of those who drive without insurance at around £30 billion per year.

Road Safety Minister Stephen Ladyman said: "The vast majority of motorists are rightly fed-up with the small hard core of anti social motorists who drive without insurance. These new measures will mean that there is no hiding place for uninsured drivers.

"We estimate that every law-abiding motorist pays £30 a year because of uninsured drivers. This new measure will be coupled with new police powers to electronically spot and ultimately to seize and destroy cars without insurance. We are determined to rid the roads of the menace of uninsured driving."

Mike Pickard, head of risk and underwriting at esure.com said that the proposals were welcome.

Mr Pickard said: "We welcome the Government's initiative to introduce continuous enforcement and fixed penalties. Using databases in the front line to identify uninsured drivers from the vehicle registration number will bring enforcement techniques in line with those of TV licensing - where databases have successfully replaced detector vans.

"In the long term this will save insured drivers money as insurers no longer have to bear the brunt of paying for accidents with uninsured drivers. esure has been calling for this for the last 18 months and we're glad to see the government is now responding to this and other industry concerns."

This is good news for drivers, but there are other, hidden factors that push up the cost of insuring a car.

In some sectors, paying by direct debit will save you money – but not in the field of car insurance.

Many insurers and brokers actually charge interest of around 20 per cent APR on premiums paid monthly, rather than in one annual hit. Provident charges a whopping 37.1 per cent for the privilege of paying in instalments.

According to Moneyexpert.com, the interest payments on an annual policy costing £700 would be £100 on a 20 per cent APR arrangement, or £250 on a 37.1 per cent one.

That extra charge can wipe out any savings you may have made by shopping around for the best deal – so it makes sense to pay a year's premium at once.

Not every insurer charges interest, however: Age Concern, Virgin, Bluesure and Zurich do not, according to Moneyexpert.com.

If you can't afford to pay it all in one go, maybe think about getting a zero per cent credit card and putting the cost onto that – providing, of course, that you can pay it off in the interest-free period!