Driving Test Availability

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) for his excellent work on this important issue. I am also conscious of the time, so I will try to keep my remarks as brief as possible. I want to refer and underline some of the points made by my hon. Friend and other colleagues and also talk about the specific problems in Reading.

First, it is important to restate how important it is to learn to drive. It is a rite of passage and an opportunity for young people—and many others, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Helena Dollimore) pointed out—to gain extra mobility, but also potentially to gain economic benefits by opening up the opportunities of a wider range of jobs. That is hugely important. Even in areas such as Reading, where there is excellent public transport, there are many people who rely on a car to travel, quite understandably, and that provides extra mobility and access to a wider range of services and job opportunities.

The points that I would like to highlight regarding my own constituency really follow on from the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell, and things, in many cases, are even worse. There are 250,000 people in the Reading urban area—we are the second-biggest urban area in the south-east of England—and there is a very young population, with many young people seeking to learn to drive, yet serious backlogs have been developing in the past few years. Some of that is connected to the pandemic, but I am afraid that the previous Government appear to have mismanaged this important public service, and my constituents, and those of neighbouring MPs, are suffering as a result.

The issues of long waits and having to travel long distances are significant for many people in the Reading area. I have had constituents who have had to travel as far as—I cannot say Aberdeen—Cheshire, which is still a significant distance away, or East Anglia, and I have also heard of parents helping their son or daughter to book a test in Cornwall, during a family holiday there, because that was the only place that they could get a test.

Clearly, this situation is completely unacceptable, and it has been made worse by issues with the booking software. I have had a number of meetings with local driving instructors who urged me to raise that with the Minister, and I hope that more can be done. I appreciate that work is under way on this, and that officials in the Department are trying to tackle the problem, but there is some gaming of the system going on that is causing great pressure to many constituents, and indeed adding to the cost of getting a test.

To make matters even worse in my own area, the current test centre on Elgar Road South, which is well known in Reading, is due to close in the spring of 2025. There is a potential replacement, but we do not know where that is or when it will open. That is causing delays and a great deal of uncertainty for local residents—for young people and others—seeking to learn to drive. Reading residents face the prospect of having to drive to Basingstoke to take their tests. That is quite a significant journey and would add a great deal of cost and time to learning to drive and passing the test. I hope that the Minister will be able to offer an update on that. I realise that it is a commercial matter for the Department, but maybe she will be able to write to me with an update on the progress of the negotiations for a new test centre in the Reading area to serve this very large population of ours. Finally—I do appreciate the pressure on time— I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell again for securing this important debate.