BBC Director General Tim Davie is responsible for perpetuating a cover-up over fake documents that were to convince Princess Diana to agree to the infamous Panorama interview, a Royal expert has claimed.

Tom Bower was commenting on Earl Spencer’s appearance at a Freedom of Information tribunal and the release of 3,000 documents on the case.

Mr Bower told GB News: “What has happened is quite extraordinary, because one man, Andy Webb, pursued the BBC to release documents about two to three years ago, and those documents, heavily redacted, showed that [former Director General] Tony Hall was lying…

“But more than that, they showed that the cover up went to the top except that the BBC didn’t want to admit that so they appointed a judge, Lord Dyson, to investigate what happened but they gave him very limited terms of reference so that he wouldn’t get to the truth.

“And he, not understanding television, made some catastrophic errors by not naming [the Panorama editor] Steve Hewlett and John Birt, the Director General, as culprits. All this, put all the blame on to Tony Hall.”

In a discussion with Dan Wootton, he continued: “So what’s happened is they’re trying hard to show that the cover up went much further than the BBC has so far admitted.

“And what is perplexing about all this is that Tim Davie has no reason at all to defend the cover up [but] he is being driven by the bureaucracy because, as we’ve said before on this programme, he’s not a politician. He’s not a programme-maker. He doesn’t understand what he is letting himself in for.

“Charles Spencer is just completely right on this. He was deceived by [Martin] Bashir. Then he was deceived by the BBC. And when he then said to the BBC ‘what you’re doing’ they ignored him.

“They tried to implicate him and did everything they could to pile it on to him and discredit him. And now Tim Davie, instead of saying ‘have all the documents’ saying ‘get to the truth, end this cover-up’ he’s perpetuated the cover-up. And in the end it will swallow him as well.”

He added: “Let’s hope the judges agree to release these apparently 3,000 documents which the BBC said did not exist. That is extraordinary.

“The cover-up is that the BBC have denied they had new documents, then they released 70 which they said for 20 years they didn’t have, now they said the 70 was all and now they’re admitting another 3,000. Why are they lying?”

The BBC refused to comment.