How much longer are people expected to wait for a driving test?
It used to be one of the great milestones in the coming of age. Every teenager yearned for their 17th birthday, when they would be finally old enough to drive.
Not any more. It seems that many of today's youngsters will be lucky to even get a date for their driving test before they turn 18.
New figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that 81 per cent of test centres had a waiting time for a test of five months or more.
This is clearly unacceptable. And it is also bad for Britain's beleaguered economy. Ministers can talk about getting young people back into work, but for the thousands languishing on a DVSA waiting list, this will be a forlorn hope. And an immobile economy will be an unproductive one.
The Government has promised to give 16- and 17-year-olds the vote at the next General Election. One wonders how many of them would gladly swap that for a prompt date with a driving-test examiner.
