Mahmood announces ban on taxi use for asylum seeker medical trips

Asylum seekers have been banned from using taxis for most medical journeys, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced.

The Government said the new rules will restrict taxi use for medical travel to exceptional, evidence-based cases such as physical disability, pregnancy or serious illness.

Any such journey would require Home Office approval.

The decision follows a recent BBC investigation that found “widespread” use of taxis by asylum seekers, including for long journeys, with one case involving a 250-mile trip to see a GP.

Taxi drivers told the BBC the system was open to “abuse”, accusing sub-contractors of inflating mileage, for instance by dispatching drivers over long distances to perform much shorter journeys.

One told Radio 4’s Today programme he had been dispatched from Gatwick to take an asylum seeker in Reading to an appointment 1.5 miles from his hotel, with a second driver sent from Heathrow to bring the same man back from the appointment.

It is understood the policy change comes after a Home Office review of transport arrangements for asylum seekers.

All service providers will be required to stop using taxis for medical journeys from February.

Ms Mahmood said the Government is working with providers to introduce alternatives — such as public transport — in a bid to save taxpayer money.

“This Government inherited Conservative contracts that are wasting billions of taxpayers’ hard-earned cash,” she said.

“I am ending the unrestricted use of taxis by asylum seekers for hospital appointments, authorising them only in the most exceptional circumstances.

“I will continue to root out waste as we close every single asylum hotel.”

Liberal Democrat MP Paul Kohler, a member of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, welcomed the change, saying the money “wasted” on taxis was a “shocking indictment of the contracts signed under the previous Tory government”.

Mr Kohler told the Today programme: “It never dawned on them it was a huge incentive to spend money.”

Earlier this month, Ms Mahmood set out a raft of measures to overhaul the asylum system, aimed at deterring illegal migration to the UK and making it easier to deport people.

The proposed changes include making refugee status temporary, subject to reviews every 30 months, and sending refugees home if their country is deemed safe.

The wide-ranging reforms drew criticism from Labour backbenchers.

Ms Mahmood told MPs it was the “uncomfortable truth” that the UK’s generous asylum offer, compared with other European countries, is drawing people to UK shores, and for British taxpayers the system “feels out of control and unfair”.

The Home Secretary told the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast that she had already directed officials to “pilot a small programme” of increased payments “just to see how it changes behaviour”.

The UK currently offers payments of up to £3,000 for some people with no right to remain in the country who agree to return home.

Meanwhile, the Home Office published figures on Saturday showing a 33% increase in activity aimed at meeting Labour’s election promise to “smash” people smuggling gangs.

The figures showed a rise in “disruptions” of people smugglers in the year to September 2025, including arrests and the seizure of boats being transported across Europe for use by people smugglers in the Channel.

Most of the activity was classed as “minor”, including arrests of low-level gang members, but “major” disruption deemed to have a significant or long-term impact on smuggling gangs was up 51%.

Labour made “smashing the gangs” a key promise in its 2024 election campaign, but since coming to power has seen small boats continue to cross the Channel.

So far this year, 39,292 people have made the journey, already more than crossed the Channel last year but still below the total for the record year of 2022.

Home Office officials pointed to the increase in the average number of people per boat compared with 2022 as a sign that disruption by law enforcement was “significantly impacting the gangs’ tactics” and forcing them to “take greater risks”.