UK asylum seekers to be banned from taking taxis to medical appointments

Asylum seekers will be banned from taking taxis to medical appointments after it was revealed the Home Office spends about £15.8m a year on the service.From February they will have to use alternative transport such as buses, no matter how urgent their medical needs.The government, however, has so far rejected pleas to give asylum seekers free access to public transport, which campaigners have been requesting for a number of years.The taxi ban comes as a result of a government review after an investigation by the BBC found that some people had travelled long distances by taxi to get to medical appointments, including one man who said he had taken a 250-mile taxi ride that cost £600 to visit a GP.Long journeys to medical appointments can be the result of an asylum seeker having been moved to a different area, sometimes while undergoing treatment such as chemotherapy.Organisations representing those seeking asylum have fought for years for a bus pass that would mean they are not forced to get a taxi when the distances they need to travel are too far to walk.Citizens UK began petitioning the government in 2023 in partnership with a coalition of 25 civil society organisations, saying a bus pass would also enable asylum seekers to take their children to school and get to volunteering placements.A pilot scheme for free bus travel for asylum seekers was launched in Oxford in November 2024 after campaigning by Citizens UK. Scotland has recently recommitted to providing free bus travel by 2026.Asylum seekers are currently entitled to one return bus journey a week. Home Office contractors often call taxis for all other necessary journeys, whether the person concerned wants to travel by taxi or not.One subcontractor in south-east London told the BBC his company would charge the Home Office about £1,000 a day for doingas many as 15 drop-offs from a hotel where asylum seekers were staying to a GP surgery about two miles away.The government said robust new rules would mean taxis would be “strictly limited to exceptional, evidenced cases”, which could include those with physical disabilities, serious or chronic illnesses or pregnancy-related needs.The Home Office would have to sign off on such journeys.Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said there was “a risk the threshold will be set too high”, adding: “We know the Home Office does not have one consistent definition or approach for how vulnerability is assessed so there’s a real risk those who need transportation won’t get it. “The current taxi bill is more a consequence of government incompetence and poor contract management than people in the asylum system exploiting it.” He said: “The use of taxis is symptomatic of an asylum system that allows private contractors to make vast profits at the expense of the taxpayer because successive governments have failed to deliver the reforms needed to create an efficient and effective system that treats people with compassion and delivers value for money. “The government must end the profiteering contracts that will only expand with the planned use of military sites and allow people in the asylum system to work so they can support themselves.”The government also said it planned to stamp out overcharging by taxi firms and other suppliers, with regular audits and strengthened reporting requirements, which it said would reinforce transparency and accountability.The measures are part of a broader crackdown on waste in asylum accommodation and transport contracts, which the government said had already saved more than £74m in accommodation costs.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said the government had inherited Conservative contracts that were “wasting billions of taxpayers hard-earned cash”.“I am ending the unrestricted use of taxis by asylum seekers for hospital appointments, authorising them only in the most exceptional circumstances,” she said.“I will continue to root out waste as we close every single asylum hotel.”The government pledged to remove asylum seekers from hotels and into alternative accommodation such as military sites by the end of this parliament, saving £500m in the process.Figures released this week show that 36,273 asylum seekers are still living in hotels, a higher figure than in June.The government said it was also scaling up removals of illegal migrants, claiming to have removed or deported almost 50,000 people since Labour came to power.Raids on illegal working are at their highest since records began, with more than 8,000 people without the right to work in the UK arrested between October 2024 and September 2025.