Driving Test Availability

Debate between Roger Gale and Kevin McKenna

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Kevin McKenna (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I would like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) for enabling the debate to happen, and everyone who has raised issues today. I will not add too much to the detail of what people have said already, but I will talk a bit about the impacts on my constituents.

I also need to declare an interest. I have reached 50 years of age without learning to drive, but changes to my circumstances at the start of July mean that there is now good reason and a strong imperative to do so. When I researched it over the summer for myself and for my husband, it became very clear that it was not an easy and immediate option for either of us. That was not a surprise, however, given the amount of messages already in my inbox.

By way of an example, a constituent of mine, Jai, came to my surgery on behalf of his daughter, who is desperate to start a career as a police officer—a career that we deeply need in constituencies across the country. She cannot start the job because she needs to be able to drive; she will be working in shifts. All she could find was a driving test months down the line in Birmingham, which is 150 miles away. She is one of the luckier constituents, in that she could actually find one.

My constituency has some significant areas of deprivation. I do not know, Sir Roger, whether you have been looking at the data packs produced by the Thames Estuary growth board this week, but they show some significant transport blackspots in my constituency and in yours. They are often associated with the areas of deepest deprivation, where it takes hours to get to centres for employment. Although we need to improve public transport and accessibility routes, it will take time. Furthermore, in constituencies with rural areas such as mine and those of many others in the room, we will always need to drive cars—it is fundamental.

There have been improvements to the capacity and number of tests and of people carrying them out, but I want to know how sustainable that is and what the plan is for sustainability. I want to know what has been learned to see how we could do things differently in the future to make sure that we do not get into this mess again. There is also the issue of blatant and obvious ticket touting. The technology now available with bots and other online grifters is turning a public service into a way to make money in a piratical way. What are the lessons for other implementations of digital services by the Government as, increasingly, that is the way services will be delivered?

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

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