BBC ‘sexed up’ Lords documentary says peer

The BBC has been accused by the House of Lords Speaker of “sexing up” a landmark series about the work of peers, as he insisted that “very few of us live in stately homes”.

Lord Fowler accused the BBC of a failure of journalism after it reported that a peer kept a taxi waiting outside Parliament so he could dash inside to qualify for a £300 daily allowance. The peer said Meet the Lords, a threepart series, had failed to investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident and “tried to sex up the programme to pretend that it is some kind of exposé which it is not”.