The cap on bus fares has increased to £3 after the government announced it would introduce free bus fares for immigrants.
This isn’t correct. While the cap on bus fares was increased to £3 in the Autumn Budget, there was no announcement of subsidised bus travel for immigrants or asylum seekers.
A false claim about a new government policy of “free bus fares for immigrants” is being shared on social media.
The post, which originates on TikTok where it has been shared more than a thousand times, shows an image of Keir Starmer in Parliament with overlaid text which says: “It’s obvious now why bus fares go up to £3. Shorty after they announced free bus fares for immigrants You are paying for there [sic] ride”.
But one claim in the post (which has also been shared on Facebook) that the government has announced free bus fares for “immigrants”, is not true. It’s true that the bus fare cap is increasing from £2 to £3 in January 2025.
While there’s no nationwide scheme giving immigrants free bus travel, there have been short-term pilots in some areas to offer free bus travel to asylum seekers, including a previous scheme in Northern Ireland and a planned programme in Oxford.
And the London Assembly passed a motion calling on the mayor to introduce travel vouchers for asylum seekers and the Scottish government has said it will revive plans for free bus travel for asylum seekers in 2026.
When Full Fact contacted the Home Office about the viral posts, a spokesperson said, via email: “This isn’t true.”
There is no reference in the Autumn Budget for any funding for subsidised or free travel for “immigrants”.
Additionally, free bus travel for immigrants was not mentioned by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her Budget speech to the House of Commons on 30 October.
The bus fare cap at £2 was already due to finish by the end of this year, and the £3 is in fact a new cap that is set to be in place from January to December 2025.
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While the government has not put forward any proposals for free travel for immigrants in line with that claimed in the post, a six month pilot ran in Northern Ireland from November 2023 where asylum seekers were given travel cards for free public transport.
And on 6 November, Oxfordshire County Council also announced it was to partner with a charity and bus companies in Oxford to trial a six-month pilot scheme which would enable free bus travel for asylum seekers living in the city.
On 7 November the London Assembly agreed a motion calling on the Mayor of London to work with London boroughs, voluntary organisations and the NHS “on ways to support public transport access for asylum seekers, such as with travel vouchers, to enable access to necessary journeys”.
The motion also recommended that the Mayor “works with the government on a long-term solution to allow asylum seekers to access public transport”.
However, there is no evidence that the proposals have been introduced by the Mayor Sadiq Khan. On the Transport for London website, asylum seekers and refugees are not included as a group which are entitled to free and discounted travel.
In October the Scottish government committed to proposals to give asylum seekers free bus travel by 2026, after the plans were previously dropped in August.
We have previously fact checked a number of other misleading claims about the benefits that asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants to the UK are entitled to.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because no such scheme to give free bus travel to immigrants has been announced by the government.
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