Are you sure about deliberately misleading to secure evidence? I'm not a lawyer, but from my knowledge of common law it is very, very rare for evidence obtained by deceit to be admissible in court. The risk of committing entrapment is very large.
They can't intentionally mislead or lie to a court, e.g. to secure a warrant or conviction. They cannot fabricate evidence.
But legally, there's fairly broad scope during an investigation or an interview for artistic license and the use of smoke and mirrors. A question could be "are we going to see your face on the CCTV?" - hoping it spooks the suspect, when there may not even be any CCTV available, just as a simple example.
"Lie" was probably a strong word on reflection, but they certainly don't have to play with a straight bat.
As for entrapment, that is not a defence in England, however depending on the circumstances, where the defendant can PROVE entrapment (your responsibility to do so), a court MAY (at it's discretion) stay the proceedings as an abuse of process. However, what many people think of entrapment in the first place, usually is not.
I agree about settling the situation and then complaining. I am not condoning fraudulent behaviour, and some posters here have admitted to making claims that are not totally genuine. That said:
Greater Anglia had the opportunity to reject those claims when they were first submitted and chose not to. For example if a train on a line with a half hourly service is cancelled then there's no way GA should be paying out for a 2+ hour delay, the system should have simply rejected it.
It appears GA have demanded repayment of all delay repay claims, not just the suspicious ones. That does not seem right to me.
My understanding is that GA have not made ANY demands whatsoever.
They've provided a figure that they feel is adequate in their opinion to resolve the matter. As far as I'm aware it's always been offered on a voluntary and optional basis, with no demands to accept it.
Nobody has to pay GA anything, and I don't think GA have said otherwise.
You could just say "no thanks" and see what happens. If they really don't have any evidence or reasonable suspicion, it's not going to get far.
The value of any settlement is bound to exceed the value of dubious claims, and realistically there has to be a punitive element, (and administration costs), because you could submit as many fraudulent claims as you like safe in the knowledge that you will only have to pay them back if caught, and you are no worse of.