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The union flag is to be put on British driving licences alongside the European flag, Downing Street has disclosed.

Ministers feel that the driving licence is, alongside the passport, the single most widely used identity document in the UK and that it is an anomaly that the card is dominated by an EU flag.

In jubilee year, the government has not yet finally decided whether to put the UK flag on the plastic licence or the royal crest. The move would not be without precedent – the Belgians, for instance, have a bear on their driving licences.

A No 10 spokesman said: “There’s no reason why the British driving licence should have the EU flag but not the union flag. People in this country are proud of our national symbols. It’s time that, once again, we allowed those national symbols on British driving licences.”

The new more patriotic licence would be phased in from 2015, when a new type of card is introduced containing a microchip to store the data.

An EU directive passed in 2006 requires the EU flag to be on the driving licence as part of the single market, but permits other symbols to be on the card.

In 1996, the Conservative government was planning to put the union flag and the crest on the then-new plastic card driving licences that were shortly to be introduced.

However, the incoming Labour government reversed this decision, and the new plastic licences, first issued in 1998, had no union flag or royal crest.

One reason was that there was doubt that Catholic drivers in Northern Ireland would tolerate the union flag on their driving licence – and there is still a possibility that no symbol will be placed on cards issued in Northern Ireland.

Ministers will also have to wait for the result of the Scottish referendum on independence in 2014 to know if the current union flag is to remain in existence.

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