The home secretary has ordered an urgent review into the use and cost of taxis to transfer asylum seekers from their hotels to appointments.
The move by Shabana Mahmood follows a BBC investigation that found some migrants have to travel long distances on journeys costing hundreds of pounds.
One asylum seeker told the BBC he had taken a 250-mile journey to visit a GP, with the driver telling him the cost to the Home Office was £600.
Asylum seekers are issued with a bus pass for one return journey per week, but for any other necessary travel, such as a doctor’s appointment, taxis are called.
The BBC asked the government how much it spends on taxi travel for asylum seekers via a Freedom of Information Act request, but the Home Office said it does not keep these figures.
The File on Four investigation reported that asylum seekers must show proof of an upcoming appointment at the reception desk of their hotel, where a taxi is booked on an automated system. Public transport or walking is not presented as an option.
This can result in some unusually long journeys and others that are unusually short.
For instance, when migrants move between hotels, they sometimes keep the same NHS doctors – especially for GP referrals.
Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he agreed that there should be an investigation into how the system works.
“I’m not surprised that this was a feature that caught people’s eye”, he said.
On Tuesday, housing minister Matthew Pennycook told the Today programme it was “questionable” that asylum seekers needed to take such long taxi journeys and said the government would “look into those cases”.
He added that asylum seekers were not “ordinary citizens just jumping on a bus”.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp, said: “Every £600 taxi ride for migrants is money that should be paying for British patients to see their GP or for ambulances to turn up on time. This is why people feel the system is rigged against them.
“Labour are writing a blank cheque for illegal immigration while services for hard-working families are strained.”
Reform UK MP Lee Anderson said: “This is likely just the tip of the iceberg and yet another example of how the Tories and Labour have spent billions supporting migrants at the expense of our own people.”
A spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats called the taxi costs “a ridiculous waste of taxpayer money and shows exactly why the government must take the asylum crisis seriously and end hotel use”.
The report, however, highlights “the poor living conditions, profiteering and exploitation which characterise our for-profit asylum system”, Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy said.
“We are setting people up to fail while the companies providing asylum accommodation make huge profits on taxpayers’ money and asylum seekers’ misery,” she added.
The BBC went into four hotels housing asylum seekers, as part of its investigation, uncovering cramped living conditions, illegal working, and fire alarms covered with plastic bags, as residents secretly cooked meals over electric hobs in bathrooms.
The BBC found:
- Smoke alarms covered with plastic bags as residents cooking meals used electric hobs in bathrooms
- A 12-year-old girl living in a hotel who had spent three-quarters of her life in the asylum system. “Once we get settled in a place, then they move us,” she said
- Some asylum seekers saying they had no choice but to work illegally for as little as £20 a day to pay off debts to people smugglers
The issue of asylum seekers in hotels has become a heated political issue attracting protests and a legal challenge by an Essex council attempting to close a hotel in its district.
The government plans to end the use of hotels for housing asylum seekers.
In August, asylum seekers told the BBC that protests outside hotels left them feeling isolated and anxious.
They emphasised that they did not choose to live in hotels and struggled in “damp and dirty” conditions.
