Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment has he made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the availability of heavy goods vehicle drivers in the UK.

Prior to the pandemic, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) conducted over 70,000 LGV tests in a normal year with more than 40,000 drivers passing their LGV test each year over the last four years. The shutdown of vocational driver training and testing during the pandemic resulted in the loss of about 30,000 test slots.

Testing has now restarted, and DVSA is making available 3,000 slots per week for vocational tests. This is double the number of LGV tests normally conducted each week before the pandemic.