Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many driving tests the Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency curtailed as a covid-19 safety measure since March 2020; and of those, how many tests were curtailed in the first 10 minutes under that measure.

To help stop the spread of coronavirus, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) has minimised the amount of time examiners and candidates spend in the vehicle during the driving test. Since May 2020, candidates who make a serious or dangerous fault on test, which means they have failed their test, are directed by the examiner back to the driving test centre where the test will end. The DVSA will keep this measure under review.

Between 1 May 2020 and 18 July 2021, 398,131 driving tests have been curtailed upon the candidate making a serious or dangerous fault. The DVSA does not record the number of minutes a driving test has been running when it is terminated.