Nadine Dorries has been told she is not credible by MPs after continuing to maintain that Channel 4 faked a reality TV programme – despite the denials of everyone involved in making the show.
The former culture secretary has been tipped for a peerage in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours, although she may now find it more difficult to secure approval for any such appointment as a result of a highly critical report by the culture select committee.
The Conservative MP sparked the bizarre row earlier this year when she told parliament that Channel 4 had faked a reality TV programme by employing actors who pretended to be struggling families.
In 2010 Dorries spent a week living in a deprived community for Tower Block of Commons, which was designed to show MPs the reality of life in poverty. The politician said she later discovered many of the people she met while filming the programme “were actually actors” while others were students at acting school.
But the House of Commons culture select committee has concluded Dorries’ claims of fakery are not “credible” and suggested she “appears to have taken an opportunity, under the protection of privilege, to traduce the reputation of Channel 4”.
Dorries’ accusation of fakery left Channel 4 and Love Productions – the company that made the programme – baffled and worried. At the time she made the accusation Dorries was leading government efforts to privatise Channel 4, meaning the broadcaster had to take the claims seriously as they threatened its entire future.
The MPs said that if Dorries had remained culture secretary in charge of privatising Channel 4 “we may have sought a referral to the privileges committee” as a result of their findings. But because she has stepped down they would simply publish their report and let others “draw their own conclusions”.
Channel 4 commissioned an investigation into the allegations, which in July concluded it could find nothing to substantiate Dorries’ allegations of fakery.
On the programme Dorries was sent to live in an estate in South Acton, west London, sparking a minor scandal when the MP was revealed to have smuggled in a £50 note, which she claimed was intended to buy gifts for the children of her hosts.
In a routine appearance before the culture select committee she said she believed the hosts were planted by the show’s producers.
“I discovered later they were actually actors,” she told MPs.
The future of Channel 4 officially remains in the balance, although there are strong indications the government is preparing to drop the controversial plan to privatise the channel. The new culture secretary, Michelle Donelan, told the House of Commons on she was “thoroughly reviewing” the case for privatisation and would take into account the views of the media industry before delivering an update within weeks.
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In correspondence with the culture select committee, Dorries said she would not withdraw her original accusations and stood by the core claims.
“I cannot as you suggest, say that I say I made a mistake as that would be untrue,” wrote Dorries. She said that after the original screening of the programme in 2010, one of the “homeless young men” she had met in the show phoned her office and asked to come to meet to her in parliament.
“He told us during lunch that he had not in fact been homeless at all, was an actor, that other boys in the section were too and that he lived at home in north London with his mother. She had also been in the programme and prepared food in a small section towards the end and worked in a pharmacy in north London.
“Given that the young man whose name I cannot remember – this was 12 years ago – was well dressed, articulate and well educated, I had no doubt at all that what he was telling me was factual and truthful.”
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