Driving Test Delays

Question

14:36:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce delays in taking a driving test.

My Lords, this Government continue to work hard to tackle car practical driving test waiting times. They provided 1.95 million tests last year and have so far recruited a further 170 driving examiners nationally, but further action is needed. In April, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State announced further measures to tackle the test backlog. This included DVSA’s fast-track consultation on improving test booking rules, launched on 28 May, to prevent learner drivers being charged excessive fees and to combat test-buying bots.

The Minister may recall our earlier exchange on the subject, when he said: “The real answer is to reduce the length of time it takes to get a test. Currently in England, it is nearly 21 weeks. The Government have a target to reduce that to seven weeks by the end of December this year”.—[Official Report, 13/1/25; col. 909.] Since then, waiting times have gone up, the December target has moved back to summer next year and, recently, the 60-plus driving test centres in and around London had no slots available at all. Into this chaos, we now have ticket touts using bots to hoover up the available slots at £62 a time and then reselling them to desperate learner drivers for £200 or more. This is not selling tickets for Glastonbury; this is a government service for people who need to drive to get to work. The only people who should book tests are those who want to take them, and if they cannot take the test, the slot should go back to the DVSA. This is a racket ripping off learner drivers. Why do the Government not stop it?

My Lords, the Government’s inheritance in this matter was that, as of July 2024, there were 532,782 car practical driving tests booked. That number has gone up, as the noble Lord remarks, but the series of actions taken by this Government is far greater than any set of actions taken by the previous Government—in fact, I cannot find any actions taken by them, other than two disputes with driving examiners, which pushed down the number of tests. This Government have done several things, and the consultation I referred to previously, launched a few days ago, is about putting a stop to the exploitation of learner drivers. The previous Government could have done more, but this Government are doing it now.

My Lords, can the Minister outline whether the Government are considering using AI to better detect and block bot-driven booking abuse; for example, monitoring booking patterns and identifying suspicious activity in real time to help prevent bots monopolising test availability?

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. The Government are using modern technology to do just that. As a result of some of the actions taken since the Government took office, there has been a further number of warnings, suspensions and closed accounts. That is a consequence of monitoring what is going on. However, it has to be said that the people who use the bots are always one step ahead, so the consultation launched recently is about changing some of the rules to make sure it is not worth using bots. We have to make sure that people who want to book tests themselves, and driving instructors and the businesses they run, both have the opportunity of booking tests so as to get people working and contributing to the economy.

My Lords, having listened carefully to what the Minister said in response to my noble friend Lord Young, I will make two points. First, when we left office, we had reduced the backlog from a 20-week delay at its peak to 15 weeks. Since then, it has got worse, not better. Secondly, if the Minister looks more carefully in his folder, he will see that we did have a comprehensive plan, with a number of steps that we took—remarkably similar to the steps that the Government themselves have laid out—and that had some success in bringing down that backlog. The simple question to the Minister is: why has it got worse on his watch?

I welcome another former Secretary of State for Transport to the House, and I look forward to my interactions with him. Looking back at the numbers of tests booked, in fact he is right: there was a modest change from 2023 to 2024. The 2023 figure was 548,000 tests and the 2024 figure was 532,000. This is not an easy issue to solve, and the truth is that behaviours have changed, but what we are concentrating on here is a series of measures, including the latest consultation—which was clearly not planned by the previous Government because it is as a result of the call for evidence from December last year, which had 27,000 responses. This fast-track consultation is about changing the rules to make sure that people who try to profit through bots do not succeed.

My Lords, the last time we discussed this question in your Lordships’ House, I told the House how I had personal experience from a member of my family on this issue, who paid way over the odds to get a timely test. While I welcome the consultation that the Minister described, can he also say something about what the Government are doing to recruit more driving examiners so that more slots can be made available? The secondary market is thriving because what ought to be a government service that is easily available is not.

I thank the noble Baroness. Of course, it is not right that people should be paying a premium for something that is a public service. Since July 2024, 287 recruits have been taken on board and started a training course, of which 170 have completed training successfully, 74 failed to complete the course and 43 are in training, and a further 178 are either booked for a training start or are in pre-employment checks after accepting an offer. The Government are working hard to increase the number of tests, but, as I said previously, people’s behaviour is changing: because they know that currently it is quite difficult, they are booking the test almost when they start and get a provisional licence. We have to increase the number of tests available through having more driving examiners—and there is more work yet to do to increase the number of people who can train and test prospective driving examiners—but we also have to do things to the booking system to reduce the prevalence of bots being successful.

My Lords, how does that figure for driving instructors compare with the 450 that, in January, the Minister stood at that Dispatch Box and pledged to recruit with a view to eliminating the problem by December?

Well, if the noble Lord adds the 287 who have been taken on board and started the training course to the future training pipeline of 178, I think he will see that it gives 465, which is extraordinarily close to the figure that I cited last time.

If we had proceeded with identity cards, some of the fiddling which is now taking place would never have been able to happen. Is it not a great regret that the coalition Government and the two parties opposite abandoned that, and is it not time that when we come round again to review our position on immigration right across the board, we need to return to looking at identity cards?

I would defer to my noble friend Lord Hanson, sitting next to me, who probably has a far greater grasp of whether that is a good thing to do. In a sense, I am not sure that that will help here, because the one thing that you must have to book a driving test is a provisional driving licence, and with that you get an identity. The difficulty is not that the original bookers do not have an identity; it is the test being swapped around—in some cases, several times, up to 10 times—and not being able to be utilised in the end by people who need them.

My Lords, I completely appreciate that my noble friend is trying to clear up the mess that he was left with, but is he aware of a problem whereby for those who have passed the theory test, because of the delays in getting the practical test, the passing of the theory test runs out? Is this something that he is aware of, and could he look at extending the validity of the theory test so that when people get the practical test, they do not have to pay twice for the theory test?

I thank my noble friend for that; I am aware of this. What we must not do in all this is reduce the safety content. The rule about theory tests and their expiry after two years is designed to make sure that when you take a practical test, you have a really up-to-date grasp of the basics of road safety and driving. The Government are not currently planning to relax that. The solution, which we have talked about already, is to have more tests with more examiners and more people training examiners in order for people to be able to get their test faster.