Producers of Comic Relief and Children in Need are to be suspended by the BBC after the corporation was forced to admit yesterday that winners of phone-in competitions on both charity broadcasts had been faked.

The BBC also decided to suspend all future competitions while it conducts a review of its most serious crisis since the Hutton affair. Up to ten producers are expected to be suspended until the investigation is completed.

An investigation discovered irregularities across the BBC’s operation, with audiences deceived by programmes on BBC One, BBC Two, children’s television, the radio station 6 Music and the World Service.

Mark Thompson, the Director-General, said that viewers and staff had “every right to be angry, as I am angry, that these and the earlier serious lapses have cast a shadow over the wider integrity of the BBC”. He admitted that viewers had been deceived on a scale far greater than previously thought.

He was speaking after a crisis meeting of the BBC Trust, the regulatory body, which heard how on a series of occasions employees pretended to be the winners of competitions in order to maintain an illusion that the competitions had been conducted correctly.

As many as ten senior producers will be asked to “stand back from their duties” by the end of the week, meaning that in reality they will be suspended. However, the proposed action provoked an angry response from trade unions, which believed that bosses should take responsibility.

On Comic Relief, shown on BBC One on March 16 of this year, viewers were invited to call in to win prizes while they were being invited to donate to the charity. The first two callers guessed wrongly, while the other waiting callers were lost in the telephone system.

A third caller was heard answering the question correctly, but the caller “was in fact not a viewer, but a member of the production team”, a BBC statement said.

A similar incident occurred at the BBC’sSport Reliefin July 2006, where management found evidence that the fake caller system “was planned as a contingency in advance”, and in a competition run as part the Scottish segment of Children in Need’s 2005 campaign.

Children in Need is the BBC’s own charity. Dating from 1927, it raised £30.1 million last year. Comic Relief and its sister charity Sport Relief, although not BBC charities are the only other organisations for which the BBC is permitted to campaign, and all three represent landmark viewing events in the year.

There were also instances of winners at three other BBC programmes, including TMi, a children’s programme on BBC Two, and on the Liz Kershaw show on BBC 6 Music, where in prerecorded programmes with faked phone-ins were broadcast as if they were live. The BBC said it was reviewing the position of Kershaw.

The breaches are the latest scandals in a crisis-strewn fortnight for the BBC, which was fined £50,000 last week for faking the winner of a phone-in on Blue Peter, and was then forced to admit that a promotional clip of the Queen had been misleadingly edited to make it appear that she had stormed out of a photoshoot with Annie Liebovitz.

The BBC Trust released its own statement saying that the latest revelations “shows further deeply disappointing evidence of insufficient understanding amongst certain staff of the standards of accuracy and honesty expected, and inadequate editorial controls to ensure compliance”.

There were, however, no calls by trustees for the resignation of Mr Thompson, or of Peter Fincham, the Controller of BBC One, who released the misleading footage of the Queen at a promotional event for the programme.

Insiders said that there was no question of either man resigning and Sir Michael Lyons, the chairman of the BBC Trust and successor to Michael Grade, backed his Director-General at the meeting yesterday morning.

The meeting began at 9am in the BBC’s Central London base at Broadcasting House. Sir Michael participated by telephone because he was honouring a speaking engagement in New Zealand, dating back to his period as Gordon Brown’s adviser on local government finance.

Trustees, who were expecting to hear last week about how footage of the Queen had been misleadingly edited, had begun to learn from Friday that there were further, damning revelations. Late on Tuesday full details became clear, and gossip was spreading around the Corporation had to brace itself for a shock.

At the Trust meeting Sir Michael canvassed views from trustees, including Chitra Barucha, a former NHS executive who is the vice-chairman, Richard Tait, who was once an ITN editor, and Dame Patricia Hodgson, the principal of Newnham College, Cambridge.

They endorsed an action plan put together by Sir Michael, creating an independent investigation into how the Queen trailer was produced, and the new breaches.

John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons Media Select Committee, said: “This isn’t just the odd lapse, these are astounding deceptions in some of the best-known shows that the BBC puts out.

“Taken with the Ofcom report, the whole credibility of the television industry is now under question. Ofcom has already fined the BBC overBlue Peter, but it will have to investigate and demonstrate how serious these new cases are.”

Meanwhile, in a strongly worded statement, Ed Richards, the chief executive of Ofcom, said that the legitimate editorial tricks of the television trade had spilled over into “falsification and an abuse of the viewers’ trust”.

He added: “Scandal then ensues. It happened most infamously with the rigged quiz showTwenty Onein America in the 1950s and it has erupted again over the past year with participation television.”

Mr Richards was speaking on the publication of a separate report examining the crisis in phone-in competions across all Britain’s major broadcasters, but in the knowledge that his words were relevant to the latest set of BBC’s admissions. Both he and the BBC gave warning that that the scandals exposed yesterday may still be only the tip of the iceberg.

In his damning report into premium-rate television services for Ofcom, Richard Ayre concluded: “The number of would-be participants who may have been ignored, misled or unfairly charged cannot be guessed at, and nor can the costs they have incurred. The figures may run into millions.”

Neither Mr Thompson nor Mr Fincham are completely off the hook, after the trust added ominously in a statement released soon after the meeting broke up at lunchtime that “we are not ready to draw a line under what has happened today”. Each of the breaches will be examined by the Trust’s editorial standards committee, and information was demanded on any disciplinary action.

When Mr Thompson arrived, after the Hutton crisis of 2004, the pressure was on the Corporation to tighten up its news reporting. Three years later, though, it emerged that where the real problem was now in the rest of its output, where the line between entertainment and fact had become dangerously blurred.

Suddenly, Michael Grade’s warnings in recent weeks of a decline in editorial standards on the production floor looked uncommonly prescient. At the beginning of the month the ITV chairman, who did the same job at the BBC until the end of last year, argued that “trust is not sufficiently valued by today’s programme makers”. Nevertheless, as the new Trust, formed at beginning of the year, faces its first crisis, it seems unlikely that there will be any senior casualties. Such a display of machismo may be excessive, but Jeremy Hunt, the Tories’ culture spokesman, asked yesterday: “The bottom line is not just can we trust the Beeb, but can we trust the Trust?”

Series of errors

Comic Relief, transmitted on March 16 on BBC One
In a section of the appeal programme, viewers were invited to donate money and informed that, by calling in, they could win prizes that belonged to a famous couple. The first two callers taken on air gave incorrect answers. The other waiting callers were lost and a third caller was heard on air successfully answering the question. This caller was not a viewer but a member of the production team

Sport Relief, transmitted on July 15, 2006, on BBC One
Viewers were led to believe that a member of the public won a competition, but the caller was in fact a member of the production team. The BBC has found evidence that this action was planned as a contingency in advance and that the physical infrastructure of the competition meant that it would have been impossible for it to be run as was described on air, and warnings about potential difficulties in conducting the competition were ignored. This incident was not referred up nor was it declared to a BBC audit in March

Children in Need, transmitted on November 18, 2005, on BBC One Scotland
In a segment called Raven: The Island in the BBC’s Children in Need appeal’s Scotland broadcast, viewers were led to believe that a phone-in competition, open to the audience, had been won by a viewer, when in fact, because of a technical mistake, calls from the public did not get through and the name of a fictitious winner was read out on air

TMi, transmitted on September 16, 2006, on BBC Two and CBBC
After a production problem with a live competition, viewers were led to believe that a member of the audience was involved and won a competition open to the public. In fact, the caller was a member of the production team. The programme team failed to seek proper advice before running the competition

The Liz Kershaw show, transmitted in 2005-06 on BBC 6 Music
In prerecorded programmes, presented as if they were live, a competition was announced which appeared to feature genuine listeners phoning in to take part, one of whom would win a prize on air. In fact, in recorded programmes, there were no competitions or prizes and all of the callers were members of production team and their friends. A new producer took over the programme in December 2006 and stopped the practices as a matter of priority

White Label, transmitted on World Service until April 2006
A weekly pop music preview programme on the English Service. On more than one occasion a fake winner was announced for the CD prize when no winning entries had been received

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