Majority of thoes without tax will get a fine so a recoupe there plus the millions saved from issuing discs, plus the overlap of tax for upto 1 month, id say they are still quids in.
I'm not so sure its happening more, but that they are catching more at it than they used to.
Exactly as Welshpug says above. Don't trust statistics, how they've calculated those figures could be completely unrepresentative. Shouting at the government is popular news, no more, just the same as stories about Jordan's latest marriage or cute cat videos.
Also it says the reports were created not by where they were registered but where they were seen in traffic by an officer or cameras.
Potentially that means these figures are extrapolated by DVLA from figures of their operations to catch untaxed cars if 1000 run through ANPR in a day and 20 are untaxed then that's 2%.
It also means that as the DVLA ( and other agencies) get smarter in where they run their operations using big data and a variety of unconventional intelligence sources their operations will catch more people.
Lies, damned lies and statistics, eh?