The claim is based on a real newspaper report, but it’s important to separate:
what was actually reported,
what evidence was provided,
and what remains allegation or anecdote.
Here’s the situation:
The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail reported claims from unnamed whistleblowers and insiders inside parts of the UK civil service, especially HMRC.
The reports alleged that some staff were:
briefly appearing in the office,
logging into office Wi-Fi from nearby car parks (“drive-by login”),
then going home while still being counted as present.
The phrase “drive-by login” was quoted as internal jargon allegedly used by managers at HMRC.
What is not established:
There is no publicly released dataset proving this is widespread.
No official investigation findings have yet confirmed the scale.
The stories rely heavily on anonymous sources and selective attendance records.
Even the reports themselves acknowledge that some non-attendance figures include maternity leave, sickness, field work, or staff based elsewhere.
So the most accurate summary is:
There probably have been some cases of employees gaming attendance systems.
That happens in many large organisations, public and private.
But headlines implying that huge numbers of civil servants are all pretending to work are not proven by the evidence currently public.
Also worth noting:
Hybrid work attendance tracking is often imperfect.
Connecting to Wi-Fi alone would not necessarily prove someone stayed in the office all day.
Most departments also track VPN usage, badge access, Teams activity, manager oversight, deliverables, etc., not just Wi-Fi presence.
The story has also become politically charged because:
some newspapers strongly oppose long-term remote working in the civil service,
while unions and many employees argue productivity should be judged by output, not desk presence.
So the “truth” is probably:
isolated abuse almost certainly exists, but the dramatic framing in the headlines goes well beyond what has actually been demonstrated publicly.
