Transport bosses tried to trick the Great London Authority (GLA) about the number of jobs at risk, a trade union revealed yesterday.

RMT has revealed that London Underground management deliberately hid the fact that 40 per cent of their station staff are bound to lose their jobs.

Originally, tube bosses assured Labour GLA member Van Shawcross that only 587 positions were at risk.

The union’s general secretary Mick Cash warned the move “would reduce the Underground to a lethal, hollowed out shell in every corner of the Capital.

“It is now time for London Underground chiefs and their leader Boris Johnson to come clean and admit that they have been caught out fiddling the figures because they are simply afraid of admitting the full extent of their tube cuts carnage,” he added.

“The bogus nature of the numbers, exposed today by RMT, should also be grounds for the immediate and unconditional suspension of the cash-led cuts that are being bulldozed on the basis of phoney information.”