Yesterday marked a turning point for road safety in Britain. Our new road safety strategy, the first for 10 years, will save lives and end years of complacency. Our targets are ambitious: reducing those killed or seriously injured on our roads by 65% by 2035, and by 70% for children under 16. That means stricter penalties for dangerous drivers; clamping down on illegal number plates and those driving without insurance; and new measures to support those most at risk, such as younger and older drivers. Today we are also outlining plans to restrict pavement parking, which will make our roads safer and more accessible to everyone. Every life lost on our roads is not only tragic, but preventable. I am proud that the steps we are taking will mean more people in more places can travel more safely.
Earlier, one of the Ministers dodged a very straightforward but important question, so will the Secretary of State now set the record straight? Do the Government have any plans that would change the scope, funding or timelines for Northern Powerhouse Rail—yes or no?
It is a simple fact that communities in the north of England have had to put up with second-rate transport systems for far too long. I can guarantee that this Government are fully committed to Northern Powerhouse Rail. I understand that the hon. Gentleman is impatient for announcements. He may have to wait a few days or weeks longer to find out exactly what the Government’s plans are, but I can assure him that we are making progress.
T2. Happy new year, Mr Speaker. Traffic jams at junction 1 of the M5 are a nightmare for residents, businesses and West Bromwich Albion FC fans. We have already had a traffic light upgrade, which has improved things slightly, and the Government have now given Sandwell council yellow box enforcement powers, which I hope will ease things further. What more can the Government do to modernise our roads, ease the jams and get Britain moving?
I commend my hon. Friend for securing those improvements. This Government are committed to modernising our roads and getting Britain moving, which is why we have already announced that we will be investing £25 billion on the strategic road network over the next five years. We will be setting out our plans for the third road investment strategy shortly.
At oral questions in September, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) asked the Minister to apologise for failing to bring down the driving test backlog, which Labour had promised to do. The Minister told the House then that there were “early signs of improvement”. Can he tell the House now whether driving test times have increased or decreased since Labour came to power 18 months ago?
The Secretary of State announced various new measures at the Transport Committee to continue to bring down the waiting times for learner drivers. [Interruption.] Look, what I would say to the right hon. Gentleman is that his party did virtually nothing to help the situation, and it is this Labour party that is making the structural changes and the real effort to bring down waiting times once and for all.
The Minister has still not properly answered the question and, frankly, should be embarrassed by that answer. Labour promised to reduce average waiting times to seven weeks—[Interruption.] Wait for it. Instead, we are now seeing waits of up to 22 weeks—almost a month longer for a driving test than at the general election. The desperate headline-grabbing announcements about calling in the Army, which in reality will increase capacity by less than half of 1%, and for one year only, will simply not cut the mustard for the hundreds of thousands of people waiting for driving tests up and down the country. Can the Minister tell the House when he expects average test waiting times to fall below the levels that Labour inherited at the general election?
Once again we see the brass neck of the right hon. Gentleman. The National Audit Office, in a report published in December, was very clear that
“DfT had limited involvement in helping DVSA tackle driving test waiting times up to mid-2024”—
I wonder what happened in 2024. Prior to that, the Department for Transport largely left the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency to try to resolve the matter itself—
T4. Although I welcome recent efforts to get a grip on the outrageous driving test backlog, more needs to be done. I urge the Secretary of State and the DVSA to take further steps to safeguard the online booking system from profiteering by restricting driving schools from booking tests in bulk and by removing the test swapping features to stop reselling at huge mark-ups.
I agree that waiting times have been too high for too long, which is why this Government are taking the decisive action that I have talked about. We are reforming the booking system so that only genuine learner drivers can book and manage tests, and we are making changes to crack down on bots and resellers. Members will have seen the announcement yesterday of the road safety strategy. Importantly, the minimum learning period is expected to improve safety and raise pass rates by up to 7%—for every 1% saved there, there are an extra 40,000 test bookings.
Across the country, people enjoy traffic-free walking, cycling and wheeling on disused railways such as the Tissington trail in Derbyshire, the Mawddach trail in Gwynedd or the Deeside way in Aberdeenshire. What steps will the Secretary of State take to make it easier for local government and communities to gain access to the 8,000 miles of disused railway that we still have, which creates such a good opportunity for family-friendly cycling trails, as part of a national network?
The disused part of the rail network is currently in the custody of National Highways. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that many of those trails provide excellent opportunities for walking, wheeling and cycling; indeed, I have spent many happy times cycling on the Tissington and Monsal trails in Derbyshire. We will continue to work through Active Travel England and with local authorities to encourage them to make great use of those greenways.