Lord Young of Cookham
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to ban the secondary market in driving tests.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency has announced measures to review the driving test booking system. It launched a call for evidence on 18 December seeking views on the current rules to book tests. This will lead to consultation on improving processes with potential future legislative changes. On 6 January, the same organisation also introduced tougher terms and conditions for driving instructors booking and managing car driving tests for their pupils.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
I am grateful for that Answer, but I think the answer to my Question is no—although it was very skilfully camouflaged. This is a racket. Middlemen are hoovering up slots on the DVSA website and then charging learner drivers a premium to access them. I googled this morning “Book your driving test earlier”. I got eight hits on the first page, with lots of inducements: “You can receive a test a month earlier than you would usually find on the DVSA website” and “Get your driving licence faster with early test bookings”. Another one said, “Book a driving test quicker with our booking system”. Trustpilot reveals that some of those are scams, with people paying £90 and not getting a test. Last month, the previous Secretary of State said:
“we will review and improve the rules around booking tests, including”,
as the Minister has just said,
measures to ban the resale of driving test appointments”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/12/24; col. 52WS.]
Why do the Government not just get on with it and ban this racket?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his research. He is right that there are some people making money out of this and they should not do it. My Answer was not just no; one of the considerations in working through what needs to be done is that we do not inadvertently make it more difficult for legitimate people looking for tests to book them. Less than one-quarter of total test bookings in September last year had been swapped from one licence to another, which means that swapping affects only a minority of tests.
The real answer is to reduce the length of time it takes to get a test. Currently in England, it is nearly 21 weeks. The Government have a target to reduce that to seven weeks by the end of December this year. For this purpose, we are recruiting 450 extra driving examiners on top of the 1,456 full-time equivalents there already are. That will make a very substantial difference, with the aim of obviating any activity as he describes and getting people tests when they can take them.
Baroness Pidgeon (LD)
My Lords, given the disparities in driving test availability that the Minister has just mentioned, will he consider incentivising local authorities to help address these shortages by supporting additional mobile driving-test centres in areas with high demand or limited access?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. The issue with the availability of tests is very substantially related to the availability of driving examiners, rather than the locations in which they are conducted. As I said, the additional 33% increase on top of the current number of full-time equivalent driving examiners is the thing that will make a real difference.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, the current situation is grossly unsatisfactory for learner drivers. The noble Lord who asked the Question referred to a cost of £99; I have knowledge of someone who paid £400 simply to get a local, quick driving test. Many people are suffering because they need that. Can the Minister tell us, as well as recruitment, what his department is doing to ensure that industrial relations are better between driving examiners and the department, in order to get us back to the situation—which we have never got back to—as it was pre-Covid?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
One consideration in improving the relationship between driving examiners and the DVSA is to have enough of them to conduct tests on a basis where people do not feel excluded or significantly delayed. It is not the only action the Government are taking: my honourable friend the Future of Roads Minister made a Statement in the other place on 18 December with a seven-point plan, all of which is designed both to help people get tests when they need them and to reduce the amount of time it takes between applying for a test and actually taking one.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend who, after a lifetime of bicycling, offers greater advocacy for learner drivers than the Government appear interested in doing—possibly he is looking for a driving test himself at this late stage. During the previous Government, in the last 18 months, the DVSA issued 283 warnings and 746 suspensions, and closed 689 alleged businesses all over this scam. None of this enforcement activity has been mentioned by the Minister. Has it been dropped? Has the DVSA gone slack under a Labour Administration, while they are focusing on consultations and reworkings of processes?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
As a matter of fact, the statistics I can quote back to him are that 344 warnings and 791 suspensions have been issued, and 811 business accounts have been closed since the new Government took office. I think that comprehensively demonstrates that there has been no such slackening off and that the DVSA is on top of this. The real answer, however, is to reduce the amount of time it takes to get the test in the first place so that people do not feel very early in their learning journey that they have to book a test long in advance of it taking place. The Government’s aim is to get that down to seven weeks by recruiting a large quantity of driving examiners, to whom I previously referred.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, does the Minister recall that there was a civil servant who drove all the way to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight for driving? Can the Minister take time out from his very busy schedule to advise Mr Dominic Cummings that he should stick to driving and improving his driving, rather than trying to undermine the elected Government of this country in association with Elon Musk?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I have no need to do that; my noble friend has just done it for me.
Lord Grayling (Con)
My Lords, the Minister has just said that 25% of tests appear to go through some of these third-party sites. My noble friend has also said that some of these sites are genuine scams. Why is it that any driving test can be booked anywhere except on the official DVSA website? Why can he not just sort that?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
One of my colleagues said, sotto voce, “For the same reason that you did not”, which is perhaps not an unreasonable point.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
This system has to allow people to book tests at the time that they need them. I did not say that 25% had been through one of these websites; I said that a quarter of total test bookings had been swapped from one licence to another. Of course, the reason why you would go to a driving instructor who has a number of pupils is that a driving instructor can apply for a test for one pupil and then transfer it to another if the second pupil is making faster progress than the first. That is how it should be. The number of people going through these agencies is clearly more than zero and, since it is, we should do something about it. But we have to do that in a way that does not prevent driving instructors from running decent businesses and also allows people to change their bookings when they need to. That is what takes time and care, and that is what the DVSA is working on.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, would it not be possible just to allow driving instructors to book on behalf of someone else and make it illegal for anyone else to do it?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his question. Many tests are booked by the applicants themselves, and there cannot be any reason why you could not be able to do that, as a potential holder of a driving licence. Equally, driving instructors have to be able to run a business, and one of the benefits of going to a registered driving instructor is that they have some flexibility in tests for their pupils.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, secondary markets almost always develop as a consequence of state failure, and this is no exception. We all know people affected—I have two children who have been. The state failure, and the explosion in these websites, began with lockdown. Is not the ultimate answer to get these and indeed other government employees to come back to the office?
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
The one thing that driving examiners cannot do is work in an office.
Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)
That must be self-evident. The real answer to this whole issue is to reduce the amount of time it takes from an application to the test occurring. If, as we expect, we can reduce that with the recruitment of 450 driving examiners, the first of which are about to start doing driving tests—and if we can reduce it from the current 21 weeks in England to seven weeks by December—we will have obviated the problem.