Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many times in the last 10 years the Secretary of State for Transport has been asked to decide whether a driver should be disqualified from driving; and in how many of those cases the drivers were disqualified from driving as a result.

Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) and the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service (SCTS) are responsible for convicting and sentencing individuals for road traffic offences. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s (DVLA) role in this process is to maintain and update the driving licence database with endorsement information, including penalty points and disqualifications.

The table below shows the number of disqualifications that were ordered by a court and notified to the DVLA in each of the last ten years. This information is held on the driving licence database for either four or 11 years and then removed in line with the law. The figures provided are a snapshot of the driving licence database at the time the information was retrieved and there may be instances where an endorsement that included an order for disqualification will have been removed from the database and is not included in the figure provided.