RAIL bosses are taking an "extravagant risk" in moving 600 telephone inquiry jobs from cities, including Newcastle, to India, MPs warned yesterday.

A report by the all-party transport committee criticised the decision by the National Rail Enquiry Service (NRES) to save £25m by outsourcing operations to Bangalore and Mumbai. The committee said a study into work moved by BT to Bangalore was "small, time-limited and inadequately monitored", consisting of only ten operators.

It also said the NRES had failed to produce evidence to back up its claim that it had taken expert advice before making the decision to move to India.

The committee concluded: "In the absence of any conclusive evidence, a transfer of 50 per cent of service provision overseas seems an extravagant risk for a publicly-funded company to take. The evidence we received about locating call centre operations overseas suggested that the market is still immature and there are likely to be real risks."

The NRES - hailed as one of the successes of rail privatisation - employs 1,700 people in call centres in Newcastle, Derby, Cardiff and Plymouth.

It costs £40m to run, a cost indirectly met by the taxpayer, and hopes to save £25m over five years by transferring 50 per cent of operations abroad.

The committee said that any cost savings made must be used to cut the subsidy and improve services, rather than increase profits for train operating companies.

However, the report also criticised aspects of the NRES' performance, in particular the failure to integrate timetable information and ticket buying.