Lord Lawson’s climate victory over the BBC

LORD Lawson has scored a victory against the BBC after it was forced to admit it distorted the facts when it claimed reindeer were dying out because of global warming.

A BBC2 programme, Russia with Simon Reeve, said reindeer numbers across the north of the country were ‘in steep decline because of climate change’.

However, Lord Lawson, the former Conservative Chancellor and renowned climate change sceptic, complained, pointing that 17 out of 19 types of Eurasian reindeer were either increasing in numbers or stable.

The claim was ‘a distortion of known facts and constitutes a serious factual error,’ he wrote.

The BBC stopped short of an apology, but said it should have been clearer.

The admission comes less than three months after the BBC issued a formal apology for a Today programme interview with Lord Lawson, during which he claimed there had been no confirmation that ‘extreme weather events’ were on the rise.