A politician got his maths wrong when he claimed Transport for London (TfL) Rail skipped 30 per cent of services over the last two years to meet targets.

Keith Prince, the Greater London Authority representative for Havering and Redbridge, revealed that the body bypassed 2,000 stops between June 2016 and March 2018.

But he failed to calculate the sums properly - and in the last two years they only skipped around one per cent of stops, not 30 per cent.

Mr Prince released an erroneous statement saying: “It seems clear to me that TfL Rail are skipping stops at the detriment of passengers purely to tick boxes on its performance record.

"This is a major concern given it is due to service the Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) in December.

“Crossrail is an exciting prospect, but can TfL customers really look forward to it when they could be left stranded waiting for their train?”

TfL Rail services run between Liverpool Street and Shenfield with the route forming part of the Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) which is due to be launched in December this year.

He went on to raise concerns that skipping stops could impact the 200 million people expected to travel on the new service.

He added: “The Mayor needs to address this with TfL immediately before the Elizabeth Line is launched. Passengers should not be left standing on station platforms just because rail bosses want to boast about a good time-keeping record."

But he was quickly put in his place by TfL.

A spokesperson for the transport body said: “The figures suggested here are completely inaccurate.

"In fact, in the last two years only around 1 per cent of scheduled station stops have not been made on TfL Rail services. It is also completely untrue to suggest stops are missed just to improve reliability figures.

“We of course apologise for the disruption that any cancelled stops cause our customers. We always aim to run services as planned and changes only happen as a last resort to prevent delayed services causing longer term disruption.”