Nadine Dorries and the ‘fake’ Channel 4 show

Nadine Dorries made a seeming bid to “traduce the reputation of Channel 4” through “groundless” claims that the broadcaster faked a reality show in which she appeared, MPs have concluded.

Members of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee said the former culture minister appeared to have exploited her parliamentary privilege to publicly allege that Channel 4 used actors instead of real people in 2010 series Tower Blocks of Commons.

The damning verdict follows what The Times described as a long-running “war of words” between Dorries and Channel 4.

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What did Dorries claim?

Four-part series Tower Blocks of Commons was made for Channel 4 by Love Productions, the company behind The Great British Bake-Off. MPs including Dorries were challenged to “leave behind the splendour of Westminster and their comfortable homes for eight days and nights to live in council tower blocks estates in some of Britain’s most deprived neighbourhoods”, according to the show blurb.

The Guardian’s Grace Dent described the series as “part MP rehabilitation show, part class war porn for angry, uppity sorts such as myself”. The Arts Desk said the documentary had revealed “a bald truth” that “our politicians haven’t the first clue how the other half lives”.

Dorries spent a week sharing a flat with sisters Rena and Renisha Spaine and their eight children on the South Acton estate, in west London. The Tory MP was expected to survive on no more than £64.30, a week’s job seekers’ allowance. But Dorries subsequently admitted to hiding a £50 note in her bra, claiming that she wanted the money to buy Christmas presents for her hosts’ children, reported The Comet.

Earlier this year, she also claimed that trickery of a far greater scale had been employed by the show makers.

During a routine appearance before the culture select committee in May, the then culture secretary claimed to have later discovered that many of the people she met while filming the programme “were actually actors”, while others were students at acting school.

“The parents of some of the boys in that programme contacted me and came here to have lunch to tell me that the boys were in acting school. They were not really living in a flat – they were not real,” she said.

Dorries added that “there was a pharmacist I went to see who prepared food – she was also a paid actor as well”.

How did the show makers say?

Dorries’s version of events was disputed by Love Production and by people who were on the show.

Dorries’s former hosts told Sky News that her claims were a “blatant lie” and “rubbish”. Dorries was “a nightmare, a different person when the camera was rolling”, Rena Spaine added.

A spokesperson for Love Productions said: “We do not use actors to impersonate contributors in any of its documentary or constructed factual series.”

Channel 4 said that it took “any allegations of misrepresentation extremely seriously” and had asked Love Production to investigate the allegations.

The Times reported in July that “working with lawyers, the company reviewed 85 hours of video and documentation and interviewed those involved in making the programme”. Channel 4 “reviewed its own documents too and concluded that Dorries’s claims were unfounded”, the paper said.

What is Dorries’s beef with Channel 4?

Dorries was “leading government efforts to privatise Channel 4” when she made the allegations, said The Guardian. So “the broadcaster had to take the claims seriously as they threatened its entire future”.

Dorries had announced in April that Channel 4 was to be sold – a move that was condemned as an act of “cultural vandalism” and “Tory spite”.

In a tweet, she argued that government ownership was “holding Channel 4 back from competing against streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon”. Ministers reportedly hoped to raise up to £1bn through the sale.

But the plan was put on hold after Dorries stood down as culture secretary in September following Boris Johnson’s departure from No 10. Her replacement, Michelle Donelan, announced that the government would reconsider the privatisation plans, prompting speculation about a “U-turn” on the controversial proposal.