Well to answer the question as put and explain. When talking about tyres and vehicles your mind zooms into standard mechanics that friction always opposes motion. It does here but not in the way the typical candidate imagined. I do not think the answers from the first response are desperately helpful.
When considering forces that tend to slow the wheel, the questioner implies that road tyre friction is responsible. They are wrong. The thing slowing the wheel down is hysteresis from contracting and expanding the rubber.
IF it was friction the the friction would need to slow the tyre down. You need to apply a force opposing the rotation so at the top of the wheel that would be backwards but towards the bottom it would be forward and partly down or up depending on which side of the wheel we are talking about.
Whether the road can do this is a moot point but see my next post for that, meanwhile…
To focus on C. The van is going at constant velocity. If you Imagine running beside the van looking at the tyres from the kerb. The wheel is rotating anti clockwise and you want to change the velocity by applying a force to the bit of the tyre in contact with the road. This is static friction for the driven wheels but no friction for a non driven wheel. Not what is discussed in any detail in the official Edexcel physics text that I have and there is nothing in the question to say we are dealing with a driven wheel.
If you push backwards, this will tend to increase the anti-clockwise speed and hence speed up the van. If you want to slow down the van, you need to push forward and this will tend to oppose the anti-clockwise motion. Hence C.
This works regardless of any driving force, that could be a rocket or a linear induction motor for all we know. Hence the reason D is wrong is not what @o1618 tells us. The reason D is wrong is in my explanation above.
A is wrong because we can’t ignore friction. Nothing to do with what is driving the van.
B is wrong because constant velocity tells us that the resultant force is zero.
The driving force is not relevant to the question because it is not mentioned in the question. A real van will be slowed down by hysteresis and wind resistance. A driving force has to oppose this. If the driving force is an engine and transmission then the force is applied via static friction. If it were a linear induction motor or a rocket or something like that then the friction is zero.
This is a really tricky question IMHO I have further thoughts which I will add