The Commons Public Bill Committee has agreed a 12-month review of airport drop-off charges, and has not set a different rate for taxis or private hire vehicles. On 20 October 2026 it agreed an amendment, moved by Transport Minister Keir Mather, so that the Secretary of State would have 12 months after Royal Assent, rather than six, to conduct and publish the review. Public Bill Committee debate A review delivered within 12 months was preferable, on the minister's argument, to a report within six that could not deal properly with the issues.
Clause 7, ordered to stand part as amended, requires a review of the impact of airport drop-off charges on users of airport services in the United Kingdom, and a copy laid before both Houses of Parliament. A drop-off charge means any charge an airport operator levies on a vehicle entering a terminal forecourt or designated kerbside area to set down one or more passengers. Bill as amended in committee The clause does not cap those charges, and it does not set one rate for taxis and another for other vehicles. The duty would apply only if the Bill is passed.
Public hire taxis
Luke Taylor, Liberal Democrat MP for Sutton and Cheam, asked for the review to allow different charges for different types of vehicle. A public hire taxi can drop a passenger at an airport and then pick up another, rather than drive away empty or park.
"There is an argument that suggests using public hire vehicles to travel to an airport reduces the impact on roadways because instead of dropping off and travelling home empty, or parking, that vehicle is then available for picking up passengers and returning them to another location. It should be considered that there is a possibility to have different charges for different vehicle types—public hire taxis, for example."
Charges should follow the public transport available at each airport, rather than one national approach. Where passengers have no public transport option, a fee levied to push them onto buses and trains is unfair, and it becomes a charge they cannot avoid. Fees of this kind are not the norm across Europe, or across the world, and follow from the British model of airport ownership. The Liberal Democrats still take £5 as the right level for a cap, together with investment in public transport, walking and cycling, particularly outside London.
Residents and taxi access
Joe Morris, Labour MP for Hexham, asked ministers to consider residents near airports in his constituency, where hire vehicles were causing a nuisance in public spaces, green spaces and gardens.
Mather named Prestwick, Ponteland and Woolsington. Residents there are particularly affected by taxi drivers who cannot use the airport as they need to, and who then affect local communities. He had taken that point to residents at roundtables on Heathrow expansion.
"People do not deserve to have disruption and nuisance on their doorstep because we are not getting the systems functioning in the way that they need to."
Disabled passengers and the £5 cap
Alison Griffiths, Conservative MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, welcomed the longer review and treated the charges as a penalty on families dropping off relatives, motorists collecting passengers, holidaymakers, and disabled passengers, particularly those who rely on taxis, who can find themselves facing yet another additional expense simply to get to and from an airport, with Belfast International and Cardiff at £3, Belfast City at £4, and Manchester and Newcastle at £5, a ceiling that could encourage the cheaper airports to raise their fee to £5.
Olly Glover, Liberal Democrat MP for Didcot and Wantage, tabled new clause 6. It would require the Secretary of State, within six months of Royal Assent, to publish proposals for a cap of £5.
Mather would not support that clause. Requiring a specific £5 cap before the review had finished would predetermine the outcome before the evidence had been adequately considered, and he asked that it not be pressed to a vote. Taylor told the same debate that the Liberal Democrats believed they would push the new clause to a vote, to make the point that a particular cap was appropriate.
The committee agreed amendment 1, which takes "six" out of clause 7 and inserts "12", and ordered the clause, as amended, to stand part of the Bill. The text reported from committee contains the 12-month review and does not contain the £5 cap.
East Midlands and Bournemouth
Amanda Hack, Labour MP for North West Leicestershire, gave the committee this account of East Midlands Airport, in her constituency. The rapid drop-off charge rose a few weeks ago from £5 for 15 minutes to £8 for 10 minutes. Just 9% of the public travel there by public transport, because the options are not available. At East Midlands Parkway, the closest station, passengers cannot get a public bus and instead use a demand-responsive service. A free one-hour car park has a shuttle until early November, after which passengers would have to walk. Forgetting to pay, after a drop-off early in the morning or late at night, is part of her casework. A pay terminal inside the airport, for the person being dropped off, has been refused. Her fear is that a £100 penalty is being used to make up the cost. At Stansted, also operated by Manchester Airports Group, 50% of people use public transport, and people living within a 10-mile radius get an 85% discount on the rapid drop-off fee. There is no such discount at East Midlands.
Jessica Toale, Labour MP for Bournemouth West, told the committee that the drop-off charge at Bournemouth Airport has gone up to £8 this year, and that there are no public transport options for getting there.
What the review is to weigh
Mather told the committee that one function of drop-off charges, as they work now, is to shift passengers towards public transport where that is possible, but that public transport is not consistent across airports in the United Kingdom. Whether free drop-off spaces are provided, and how clearly they can be found, is of major importance. Disabled passengers, and people travelling from rural areas without the public transport they need, are part of the same question. Airports provide separate drop-off locations for disabled passengers, which leaves a further question of signage and access. Freezing a cap at about £5 may be neither proportionate nor enough. Drop-off charges are also used to pay for improvements to facilities and access, so the review has to weigh that income alongside the cost to passengers.