Train drivers’ decades-long ticket fraud ‘cost taxpayer millions’

Public sector workers have been using fake documents to travel by train without paying in a decades-long fraud, The Telegraph can disclose.

The workers, employed by the Government to transport nuclear waste, used false paperwork so they could take rail journeys without buying a ticket.

The fraud was committed by a number of employees of Nuclear Transport Solutions (NTS), who were employed to drive freight trains full of nuclear waste around the country.

Freight drivers are allowed to take free passenger journeys, using a so-called Freight Travel Duty Pass, if they are on their way to collect a goods train. They must also carry documentary evidence proving this is the purpose of their trip. Other journeys for work purposes must be paid for, with NTS covering reasonable travel expenses.

Fake duty rosters used

However, some of the 160 drivers – who work for a subsidiary of NTS, Direct Rail Services (DRS) – were supplied with fake duty rosters suggesting they were travelling to pick up a train even when they were not, allowing them to make free journeys illegally.

Whistleblowers have told The Telegraph that the practice was widespread, endorsed by some managers, and went on for decades – potentially cheating taxpayers out of millions of pounds.

Internal documents suggest that an NTS manager freely admitted “knocking up” the duty rosters – known as diagrams in the rail industry – when drivers asked him whether they could be listed as “on duty” for travel to other work meetings.

In an interview transcript, the manager said that the practice had been running “since 1996”.

Ticket revenue is paid directly to the government, which then hands a portion of it back to train companies for covering their running costs. Any revenue shortfall is covered by taxpayer subsidy, which last year stood at £12bn.

Richard Holden, the shadow transport secretary, called for a police investigation into the NTS fraud allegations.

He said: “This is beyond belief. Thirty years of what looks like systematic fraud potentially costing millions of pounds to the taxpayer must be investigated by the Government and police.

“It’s clear that train companies must have lost millions of pounds to this over the decades. Nuclear Transport Solutions must commit to repaying its train drivers’ evaded fares in full.”

Department for Transport sources expressed anger when told of the fraud.

The decades-long practice appears to have come to the attention of senior NTS management after one staff member, Driver A, was caught without a diagram or valid ticket by a London North Eastern Railway inspector.

Disciplinary investigation revealed fraud

A disciplinary investigation was launched into the driver after the inspector wrote to NTS.

Driver A’s line manager (Manager B) was interviewed as a witness. Neither man can be named for legal reasons.

During that interview, the manager said: “When we send people for medicals, we probably use the Freight Duty Travel Pass.

“It is probably the medicals which are outside of the policy, which have been used like that probably since the RS [Rail Settlement Plan Ltd, which controls the policy] started in 1996, and other freight companies as well.”

Manager B was then asked about two other train drivers who travelled to the same meeting as Driver A. He described one of them as “very particular”, saying: “He asked for a diagram so that he could validate his travel on the London North Eastern Railway, for which I contacted planning and asked them to produce a diagram.

“On the Wednesday night, [the “very particular” driver] messaged and said, ‘I still don’t have a diagram.’ I knocked one up for him that would authorise his travel on the train.

“It shouldn’t be my job, but I did it because he was coming the next day. Those two came up on a diagram that I produced to validate their travel.”

NTS, which is owned by the Government, moves both nuclear fuel and spent nuclear waste around the world. It boasts of having a “100pc nuclear safety record”.

DRS, its train subsidiary, is responsible for moving fuel and spent wastebetween nuclear power stations and ports. There, NTS-operated ships collect and deliver the atomic material.

Train ticket evasion costs the government-controlled industry around £240m a year, according to figures cited by Lord Hendy, the rail minister.

A DRS spokesman played down the scale of the apparent fraud because when it began in 1996, the company employed far fewer drivers.

The spokesman said: “We take allegations of any wrongdoing seriously and are looking into the matter to establish the facts.

“Given this work is at an early stage, it would be inappropriate to comment further. In the meantime, employees are being reminded of the rules for using the Freight Duty Cards.”

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesman said: “Even one potential case of fraud is one too many. We fully support Direct Rail Services in investigating this matter.”

[Source: Daily Telegraph]