Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of introducing restrictions on newly qualified drivers to improve road safety.

There is evidence from countries in which a system of Graduated Driving Licences (GDL) has been implemented to suggest that it can have a beneficial effect on road safety.

The Department has decided to use the introduction of GDL in Northern Ireland as a pilot, to gather evidence on the potential for GDL in Great Britain. Officials from the Department and Northern Ireland are currently discussing how to take this work forward.

More widely, the Department is making good progress against an ambitious range of measures to enhance the safety of UK road users as set out in its 2015 Road Safety statement. This includes the doubling of penalty points for motorists using a phone whilst driving, which means that new drivers, within 2 years of passing their test, risk having their licence revoked if caught.