UK asylum seekers to be banned from taking taxis to medical appointments | Immigration and asylum

Asylum seekers will be banned from taking taxis to medical appointments after it was revealed the Home Office spends around £15.8 million a year on the service.

Starting from February, they will have to use alternative means of transportation such as buses, no matter how urgent their medical needs are.

But the government has so far rejected calls for asylum seekers to be given free access to public transport, which campaigners have been calling for for several years.

The taxi ban comes as a result of government scrutiny after a BBC investigation found some people were traveling long distances by taxi to get to medical appointments; Among them was a man who said he took a 250-mile taxi ride to visit his GP, costing £600.

Long journeys to medical appointments may sometimes be the result of the asylum seeker being moved to a different area while undergoing treatment such as chemotherapy.

Organizations representing asylum seekers have been fighting for years for a bus ticket that would mean they would not have to take taxis when the distances they need to travel are too far to walk.

Citizens UK began petitioning the government in 2023, jointly with a coalition of 25 civil society organisations, saying the bus ticket would also allow asylum seekers to take their children to school and go on voluntary placements.

Following Citizens UK’s campaign, a pilot scheme for free bus travel for asylum seekers was launched in Oxford in November 2024. Scotland recently pledged to provide free bus travel by 2026.

Asylum seekers are currently entitled to a return journey by bus once a week. Home Office contractors often call taxis for all necessary journeys, whether or not the individual concerned wishes to travel by taxi.

A subcontractor in south-east London told the BBC that his company would charge the Home Office nearly £1,000 a day for up to 15 drop-offs from a hotel where asylum seekers went to a GP surgery about two miles away.

The government said the new rules would mean taxis would be “strictly limited to exceptional, proven cases”; These cases may include physical disabilities, serious or chronic illnesses, or pregnancy-related needs.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs will need to sign off on such trips.

Refugee Council Chief Executive Enver Solomon said there was a “risk that the threshold will be set too high”, adding: “We know that the Home Office does not have a consistent definition or approach to how to assess vulnerability, so there is a risk that those who need transport may not receive it.

“The current taxi bill is a result of government incompetence and poor contract management rather than people in the asylum system exploiting it.”

He said: “Taxi use is symptomatic of a system of asylum that allows private contractors to make huge profits at the expense of taxpayers because successive governments have failed to deliver the reforms needed to create an efficient and effective system that treats people with compassion and provides value for money.

“The government must put an end to profiteering contracts that will only expand through the planned use of military installations and allow people in the asylum system to work to support themselves.”

The government has also said it plans to crack down on overcharging taxi firms and other suppliers with regular audits and strengthened reporting requirements, which it says will strengthen transparency and accountability.

The measures are part of a wider crackdown on waste in asylum seeker accommodation and transport contracts, which the government says has already saved more than £74 million in accommodation costs.

Home Affairs Minister Shabana Mahmood said the government had inherited Conservative contracts that “wasted billions of taxpayers’ hard-earned money”.

“I am ending asylum seekers’ unlimited use of taxis to hospital appointments and only allowing them in very exceptional cases,” he said.

“I will continue to root out waste while closing all asylum hotels.”

The government has pledged to move asylum seekers out of hotels and into alternative accommodation such as military sites by the end of this parliament, saving £500 million in the process.

Figures released this week show 36,273 asylum seekers are still living in hotels; This figure is higher than in June.

The government said it had also increased removals of illegal immigrants, claiming it had removed or deported nearly 50,000 people since Labor came to power.

Raids on illegal work have reached their highest level since records began; More than 8,000 people without the right to work were arrested in the UK between October 2024 and September 2025.