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The Home Office has called the use of a £50,000 stretch limousine to ferry asylum seekers across the country "totally inappropriate".

The 16-seater luxury vehicle was arranged by government contractor Serco on behalf of the Home Office to transport migrants from London to their new homes in the North of England.

Onlookers assumed it must have been a stag do but the driver told them he was being paid £3,000 to take a group of seven male asylum seekers to Manchester.

The extraordinary trip was witnessed by residents in Longford, a village near Heathrow Airport, where the migrants were said to have stayed in residential properties for several days before being taken to longer term accommodation.

Rana Saif, 55, who owns a local pub, told the Daily Mail: ‘The limo was here about two months ago, it arrived about 11.30am.

"It was there about half an hour, it took them from the hotel. There were seven migrants, all young African men.

"The driver told me he didn’t know who they were.

(Image: Google)

"He said he was going to take them to Manchester and he was being paid £3,000.

"He said he Home Office would pay him. It’s a big waste of money and tax-payers money at that.

"I thought it must be a stag do or something like that.’

The Home Office said that Serco was contracted for transporting asylum seekers and had apologised for the limousine being used.

A Home Office spokesperson told Mirror Online: "Our contractors are responsible for arranging the transport of asylum seekers and bear the cost of doing so.

"However, this incident was totally inappropriate and Serco has apologised.

"The terms of our contract with Serco requires them to take all reasonable steps to ensure transport is appropriate.

"We have reminded the company of their contractual obligations and expressed our strong disapproval.

"There was no additional cost to the taxpayer."

Jenni Halliday, Serco’s Contract Director for Compass, said, “The transport provided, on this one occasion in July, was clearly inappropriate.

"There was no additional cost to the taxpayer. We have apologised to the Home Office and our internal processes have been changed to ensure that this will not happened again.”