The current test has been amended over recent years to introduce lower emission limits. The removal of after treatment devices, such as diesel particulate filters and selective catalytic reduction devices, have been added to the list of reasons why a vehicle would fail its MOT.

In May 2018, the opacity limits for diesel vehicles will be tightened for newer diesel vehicles.

All drivers have an ongoing legal responsibility to ensure that they meet the vision standards for driving, wearing glasses or corrective lenses if needed. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) makes the eyesight standards for driving clear in leaflets, forms and on GOV.UK.

Opticians and optometrists already have a duty of care to their patients and the general public. On this basis they can already inform the DVLA of instances where they consider a patient to be unfit to drive. This is supported by guidance issued by the Royal College of Optometrists.

The DVLA’s “Assessing Fitness to Drive: A Guide for Medical Professionals” clarifies medical professionals’ obligations to notify a condition to the DVLA if their patient is unwilling or unable to report it themselves.

There are no plans to introduce a legal requirement for opticians to inform the DVLA if a driver is unable to meet the required eyesight standards for driving.

The MOT test is an effective tool for checking annually that vehicles meet minimum roadworthiness standards, including those applying to the condition of tyres. Of the around 27 million registered cars eligible for MOT, 7,789,251 class 3 and 4 vehicles (cars, vans and passenger vehicles with up to 12 seats) failed the MOT during the business year 2015/2016. A total of 599,772 (7.7%) of those test failures related to defective tyres. Identification of tyre-related defects at MOT prevented the cars to which they were fitted from being used on public roads with unroadworthy tyres.

The General Product Safety Regulations (GPSR) require manufacturers to supply information of the vehicles they are selling; this information is found in the handbook and contains all the technical information about the vehicle, including servicing requirements.

There is no need to notify the public about the consumption of poppy seeds as the limit for 6-monoacetylmorphine (6-MAM) – heroin and diamorphine – was set to rule out accidental exposure. All the drugs most associated with illegal use have been set at accidental exposure limits.

The Government has produced a range of guidance for pharmacies, healthcare professionals and the general public about medications and non-illegal use of drugs when driving, which is available at the following address:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/drug-driving

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) does not hold data on how many people have been refused a driving licence after testing positive for poppy seeds during a drug screening.

“Cassie’s Law” is a process that was introduced in February 2013 to allow the police to notify the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) urgently of any driver who fails a roadside number plate eyesight test. This allows the DVLA to revoke the licence of any driver who fails the test almost immediately, helping to quickly remove unsafe drivers from the road.

Since the introduction of this process in 2013, 1,034 driving licences have been revoked. The table below shows the figures by year.

The number of government-owned (freehold) goods vehicle test stations are as follows;

(a) 40 in England (b) 3 in Wales and (c) 12 in Scotland.

A consultation is being planned about MOT testing, including the scope of exemptions from MOTs, for vehicles of historic interest. The proposal to bring the MOT date into line with the dates for vehicle excise duty is likely to be one consultation option. We hope to launch this consultation later this year. The target for making changes is for them to come into effect by May 2017.

The Department has contracted a researcher to evaluate the effect and impact on road safety of the new section 5A offence, which will include the use of roadside testing. We expect to publish their final report in 2017. The effectiveness of the recent THINK! 2016 drug drive spring campaign which refers to the use of roadside drug testing will also be evaluated and a report will be published in the summer 2016.

We continue to press Volkswagen on the issue of compensation for UK consumers. The Secretary of State summoned the Managing Director of VW UK to a further meeting this week to discuss the issue.

We undertook the Vehicle Emissions Testing Programme to check for further test cycle manipulation strategies as used by the Volkswagen Group. To ensure the independence of this important programme neither the vehicles nor the testing facilities were provided by the vehicle industry, and the department funded the testing.

Our initial testing programme, launched in the wake of the VW emissions scandal, is now complete and the results were published on 21 April. The Department for Transport will be establishing a new unit focused on checking that vehicles meet type approval requirements. The unit will have a budget of £1 million a year and will involve the department’s agencies, the Vehicle Certification Agency and the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency. It will initially focus on emissions testing and enforcement. The unit will be operational later this year.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency is reducing vocational waiting times by recruiting more examiners, improving its forecasting model to better match resource with demand and redeploying examiners from lower wait centres to those with higher waiting times.

I anticipate this consultation will be published in the summer and will run for 12 weeks.

The Vehicle Certification Agency’s (VCA) emissions testing is conducted to the requirements set out in the relevant type approval legislation. The Government has been pressing for action at an EU-level to improve emissions tests and we have already secured a tough new Real Driving Emissions test. From next year, vehicles will have to meet emissions limits in real driving conditions across a wide range of typical operating conditions.

The Secretary of State has met with the Chief Executive of Volkswagen UK to press that the technical fixes are completed as quickly as possible for UK consumers. The VCA is working closely with the VW group and other approval authorities to evaluate the proposed technical solutions. They are carrying out tests to ensure that after the fix is applied the vehicles meet all the legal requirements including emissions, and that other vehicle characteristics are unchanged, including fuel consumption and engine noise.

Manufacturers are required to comply with different technical standards between the EU market and the USA market. The engineering solution proposed by VW will bring its diesel cars into compliance with the EU emissions limits and testing is underway to confirm that this solution works for all model types. We do not have information regarding VW’s technical solutions in the USA.

The Government takes the unacceptable actions of Volkswagen extremely seriously and our priority is to protect the public. In Europe, Volkswagen Group has developed a technical solution for the affected vehicles and is testing this with the relevant type approval authorities. For Skoda vehicles this is the UK’s Vehicle Certification Agency. We understand that the company is not in the same position in the USA as there is not yet an agreed technical solution. We are urging Volkswagen to complete swiftly the recall of the affected vehicles in the UK.

In his appearance before the Transport Select Committee on 25 January, Paul Willis, the CEO of Volkswagen UK, reconfirmed that Volkswagen do not intend to offer compensation in the UK as they do not believe that vehicle owners have suffered a loss. In the USA they have offered their customers up to $1,000 in gift vouchers. It is for Volkswagen to justify to their customers the different approaches that they are taking in different jurisdictions, however the Government expects Volkswagen to treat its UK customers fairly and the Secretary of State continues to press Volkswagen on the issue of this discrepancy in compensation.

The Government expects Volkswagen to treat its UK consumers fairly and adequately address their concerns. The Secretary of State pressed Volkswagen UK on their plans for the recall of affected vehicles, including for managing the additional workload, in a meeting on 10 December. He urged Volkswagen to resolve swiftly this unacceptable situation for both their customers and the British public. Departmental officials continue to meet regularly with Volkswagen on this issue.

There is an initial budget of £650k for the Emissions Testing Programme. To retain independence we are not seeking contributions from manufacturers. Where testing is being done specifically on Skoda vehicles outside of this test programme, Skoda will be charged on a case by case basis by the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA). The fees are set out in The Motor Vehicles (Type Approval and Approval Marks)(Fees) Regulations 1999, as amended. VCA will charge between £8,000 and £10,000 per vehicle. The emissions test facilities will be charged separately.

I have held regular discussions with my ministerial colleagues on the new European emissions tests for cars. The Government strongly supports the ‘Real Driving Emissions’ agreement, which is expected to reduce significantly real world oxides of nitrogen emissions from diesel cars.