Driving Test Availability

Jas Athwal Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Jas Athwal, you are on the list but you are not rising. Do you not wish to speak?

[Jas Athwal (Ilford South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Sir Roger. I cannot speak because I have not made my maiden speech. I will make an intervention very shortly, thank you.

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. It is a number of decades since I took my driving test in my constituency of Carlisle, and I was therefore very grateful to a constituent who recently attended my advice surgery to highlight the issues his business—he is a driving instructor—faced in securing driving tests in the Carlisle area. He went further and suggested a couple of potential measures that could be taken. I would be grateful if the Minister could perhaps comment on them in her closing remarks.

In Carlisle, we are looking at a wait time of approaching five months for a test at the Carlisle test centre. Just up the road in Dumfries, the wait is just over a month. My constituent asks, I feel very reasonably, why there cannot be greater flexibility in moving test assessors around neighbouring test centres. That seems very sensible. Similarly, I welcome the steps that have been taken to counter the bots that are snapping up the tests at great pace, but my constituent tells me that, in his case, two out of three of his computers have had their IP addresses blocked. When he contacts the DVSA to ask for them to be unblocked, the response is less than adequate. It would help legitimate businesses if they felt that the DVSA was responding promptly to their concerns.

[Jas Athwal]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) for securing such an important debate. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) agree that the elephant in the room is the industrial-scale fraud going on? In Carlisle, it takes five months to get a driving test. Similarly, in Ilford South, in east London, it takes about six months. But I rang a local driving instructor who has raised this issue with me, and I could get four tests in Dorchester, seven in Cheltenham, eight in Bromley and three in Erith. If I did not want to travel, I could pay a premium rate of £300 and it could be done at the local test centre 50 yards from my house. That is something we need to address.

[Ms Minns]

I entirely concur with my hon. Friend’s remarks. It is unacceptable that so many people are waiting so many months for their driving tests. In areas such as mine where there is little or no public transport, the economic impact of not being able to work is considerable. To help our Government, the DVSA could look at recording, when people are waiting for tests, whether they are required to drive for their job. That data is not currently captured, and it would be extremely beneficial to capture it.

On a related point, the DVLA is experiencing increasing delays in carrying out medical assessments on people who, for whatever reason, are temporarily unable to drive. One of my constituents has been waiting over 18 months for a routine medical assessment after having a stroke. That was a number of months after his own doctor had said he was now able to drive. I would be grateful if the Minister addressed that issue in her remarks.