Driving Forward: The Road to Access

Chair: Chris Maines; Aide: Dionne Daniel; Hall Aide: Leo Dempster

Submitted by: Young Liberals
Mover: MacKenzie Gregory
Summation: Will Tennison

Conference notes that:

1. Learning to drive is a vital life skill for many young people, particularly in rural and semi-rural areas where public transport is limited or unreliable; around one in five people in England live in rural areas, where car dependency is significantly higher and alternatives to driving are often impractical.
2. Learning to drive is also especially important for many disabled people, for whom driving can provide greater independence and access to work, education, healthcare and social opportunities than public transport alone.
3. There is a severe and persistent national backlog in practical driving tests; as of 2024, average waiting times at many Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) test centres exceeded 20 weeks, with waits of six months or more in some areas, compared with pre-pandemic averages of six to eight weeks.
4. This backlog is driven by long-term examiner shortages, insufficient test centre capacity, and limited system resilience within the DVSA following the pandemic, despite sustained and predictable demand.
5. Scarcity of test slots has enabled exploitation by third-party bots, resellers, and touts, who reserve appointments in bulk and resell them at inflated prices; learners have reported being charged hundreds of pounds above the official test fee to secure earlier slots.
6. The cost of learning to drive has risen substantially - most learners require 40-50 hours of professional instruction, with average lesson prices exceeding £35 per hour, placing the cost of lessons alone above £1,500 before tests or insurance.
7. The cost of car insurance for young drivers remains disproportionately high. Average annual premiums for drivers aged 17-24 have exceeded £2,000, with affordability often made conditional on the use of telematics or black box policies that monitor driving behaviour and location with limited transparency or choice.
8. The DVSA practical driving test does not require demonstrated experience of night-time driving, motorway driving, or adverse weather conditions, despite these being common real-world scenarios for new drivers.
9. Taken together, these barriers restrict access to employment and education, entrench geographic inequality, and disproportionately disadvantage young people, disabled people, and those without family financial support.

Conference believes that:

1. Access to transport is a matter of social and economic justice, and no one should be prevented from learning to drive because of their income, disability or where they live.
2. Public transport must be improved and expanded, but driving remains essential to the freedom, mobility and life chances of many young people, particularly in rural and poorly connected communities.
3. A fair market cannot function where artificial scarcity is exploited through opaque systems, weak enforcement or automated intermediaries that profit from public service failure.
4. Privacy and personal autonomy should be respected, and intrusive monitoring through telematics should not become a de facto requirement for affordable insurance for young drivers.
5. Improving access to high-quality driver education, fair testing systems and transparent insurance practices can improve road safety and opportunity without reliance on surveillance.

Conference calls for:

1. Urgent and sustained investment to expand DVSA testing capacity, including recruiting and retaining additional examiners, expanding test centres in underserved areas, and building resilience to prevent future backlogs.
2. Targeted action to eliminate exploitation of driving test bookings, including anti-bot protections, identity-linked bookings, limits on automated reservations and enforcement against third-party reselling.
3. A national bursary scheme, the Young Drivers Support Fund, to subsidise driving lessons and test fees for low-income young people and disabled learners.
4. A formal review and reform of car insurance practices for under-25s, including improved pricing transparency and limits on age-based premium multipliers.
5. Clear consumer rights and regulatory oversight for telematics-based insurance, including transparency over data use, proportionality of monitoring and genuine non-telematics alternatives.
6. Modernisation of driver training and assessment to ensure learners gain experience of real-world conditions, including night driving, motorway driving and adverse weather.
7. Nationwide driver education programmes delivered through schools, colleges, and community settings, covering road safety, costs, insurance practices, consumer rights and driver responsibilities.
8. Allocating £50 million per year for investment in driver education, testing capacity and access support, recognising that reducing backlogs and improving access will improve road safety and opportunity.
9. The development of public-private partnerships with insurers, driving schools, and local authorities to support discounted lessons and fair access models, without compromising consumer protection or privacy.

Applicability: Federal.

Mover: 7 minutes; summation 4 minutes; all other speakers: 3 minutes. For eligibility and procedure for speaking in this debate, see pages 10-11 of the agenda. You can submit a speaker's card online here or in person.

The deadline for amendments to this motion is 13.00 Monday 2 March; you can submit amendments online here, see pages 9–10 of the agenda for more information. Those selected for debate will be printed in Conference Extra and Saturday’s Conference Daily. The deadline for requests for separate votes is 09.00 Thursday 12 March; see page 9 of the agenda for more information.