After it was discovered that migrants had travelled great distances at the cost of taxpayers, a restriction on asylum seekers using taxis to get to doctors’ appointments went into effect.
In one case, an asylum seeker billed the Home Office £600 for a 250-mile journey to see a GP for a check-up on his knee, according to a BBC investigation.
Following this, the Home Secretary initiated an immediate assessment and announced that the system had now been discontinued.
Under new rules, taxis can still be utilised for rare circumstances such as disability, severe illness or pregnancy. Any journey where a taxi is used will now need sign-off from the Home Office.
Taxis can also be used for asylum seekers travelling between accommodation, but this is still under consideration by the Home Office.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told the BBC: ‘I have ended the wasteful use of taxis for medical appointments to protect the taxpayer’s purse.
‘I will stop at nothing to remove the incentives that draw illegal migrants to Britain to restore order and control to our borders.’
One taxi driver said his firm would do around 15 daily drop-offs from a south-east London hotel to a doctor’s surgery around two miles away.
He claimed that these journeys alone would cost the Home Office £1,000 a day.
Another taxi driver, named Steve, said that firms would purposely increase the mileage on trips by dispatching drivers from areas further away from the pick-up.
He said that while working for a subcontractor, he was sent from Gatwick to Southampton ‘more than once’, driving more than 275 miles a day with half of his journey without a passenger in his car.
It comes after figures released in November revealed that an average of 15.8 million had been spent in a year on taxis for asylum seekers.
A total of 41,472 migrants arrived in the UK in 2025 after crossing the English Channel, the second-highest annual figure on record, 9 per cent below the all-time high of 45,774 in 2022.
The total for 2025 was 13 per cent higher than the figure for 2024, when 36,816 migrants made the journey, and 41 per cent higher than 2023’s total of 29,437.
For much of 2025, the number of arrivals was operating at the highest level since data on Channel crossings was first published in 2018.
But the rate slowed during the last two months of the year, and there were extended periods when no migrants arrived, including a 28-day run from November 15 to December 12.
The basic reality is that they shouldn’t be here in the first place, especially if they arrived illegally, but our government don’t care, and they have destroyed this country, and they only care about themselves, and don’t overlook all those soldiers that fought for Britain during World War II, they must be turning in their graves. It’s just a mass takeover, and so very sad because all of our beautiful history and British heritage is being eroded.
These migrants are taking over everything. NHS waiting lists, Accident and Emergency departments in hospitals, and almost all of them are non-English speaking people screeching into their mobiles. Our system is being abused, but our government is allowing this to happen to our once-great country.
They disrupt everything. They take over everything, even our buses, and God forbid an elderly person needs a seat, they don’t stand a chance, and these people are always on their phones, which is on speaker phone, so you can hear their entire conversation, even though you can’t understand it, and if they go to places like the A&E department, they bring their whole family along as well, taking up seats that other sick people could sit on.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 