Have you ever wished you were immune to parking fines and speed cameras?

It's not impossible. All you have to do is buy a foreign registered car and bring it to Birmingham, according to motoring magazine Auto Express.

As part of research carried out by the magazine, journalist Mat Watson travelled to the north of France, paid just £600 for a 1988 Renault 5 and brought it back to the UK.

He's been driving around in it ever since - notching up speeding tickets and parking fines in Birmingham, Walsall and other parts of the country.

He found when he parked on double yellow lines in Walsall and in a pay and display facility in Birmingham, traffic wardens ignored the car.

He said: "I parked on Livery Street, near the cathedral. I was half on a single yellow line and half in a pay and display parking bay, with no ticket, so it was obviously bad parking.

"A warden looked at the car and started writing out ticket, but he stopped when he realisedwas a foreign registration- I wanted to get a ticket so I could see if it was followed up, so I left the car right outside Birmingham Crown Court, where it did get a ticket.

He spent four days trying to get tickets in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, and found Birmingham the most difficult place to get a ticket.

Mr Watson said: "I owe £880 and I haven't been contacted - and that was in just four days.

"I don't condone this. I don't want people to go out and copy what I did, but the police are

Mr Gray said that if the Tories are voted into power, they will raise the speed limit on motorways to 80mph.

"The M4 is virtually straight between those junctions," said Mr Gray.

"I cannot think of any dangerous stretches. I am not aware of any safety reason why cameras should be there." even less likely to stop you if you are in a foreign car because they think you are a tourist.

"I know that if I want to get in touch with someone in France or Germany or Belgium then I can do so fairly easily. So why can't the authorities? British motorists are being penalised left, right and centre but foreign motorists are getting away with it.

"I actually wanted the authorities to give me a ticket. We hope that if I try it again after this story I will get letters on my doorstep."

Mr Watson said West Midlands Casualty Reduction Partnership, the organisation which oversees speed camera use in the West Midlands, admitted to Auto Express that it usually deletes images of foreign speeders rather than chase them up.

But a spokesman for West Midlands Casualty Reduction Partnership denied the claims.

He said: "Up until relatively recently there were problems with people with foreign licences making it difficult to chase up. But in the last eight months we have had our own inquiry team at West Midlands Police.

" When you get photographed by a speed camera the offence comes back to West Midlands Police and they view the film to determine if an offence was committed.

"They check on the computer system to see who the vehicle is registered to. Police then send out a notice of intended prosecution, even if the vehicle is registered to an address abroad.

"People with a British driving licence can go through the fixed penalty system by post. If you don't have a British licence then you have to go to court.

"We have now set up an inquiry team to follow up all people who haven't responded to notices of prosecution, including those at foreign addresses."