A new BBC Two documentary promises to take viewers behind-the-scenes of the House of Lords to unearth what the upper chamber gets up to.

The Meet the Lords film, due to be aired on Monday 27 February, follows the broadcaster's 2015 Inside the Commons series.

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The 805 peers can earn £300 ($372)-a-day by clocking in and out of the chamber, with former Lord Speaker Baroness D'Souza spilling the beans on one nameless peer jumping out of a taxi to mark his attendance only to quickly return to the vehicle.

"He ran in, presumably to show that he'd attended, and then ran out again while the taxi was still running. So I mean that's not normal, but it is something that does happen and I think that we have lost the sense of honour that used to pertain, and that is a great, great shame," she said.

Conservative peer and House of Cards author Lord Michael Dobbs, meanwhile, compared the upper chamber to a "composting machine".

"We take all of the nonsense, rubbish, legislation – and some of it is rubbish – that come down from the other end of the building in the Commons, and it disappears inside the House of Lords for six months while we all work on it, line by line, clause by clause, and we improve it," he said.

"We're a bit like a composting machine, whatever comes out the other end is always more fragrant and more fertile than what went in. So you see we're really in the House of Lords, we're really just parliamentary worms."

The release of the clip coincides with the second day of debate in the Lords over the government's Article 50 bill. The draft legislation, which got an overwhelming backing in the Commons, is needed to trigger Brexit talks.

Prime Minister Theresa May made a rare and unexpected move by sitting in the chamber as the debate began on Monday.

A House of Lords spokesman said: "The House of Lords is an active and effective revising chamber that considered 3,678 amendments to legislation in the last session, and members contribute to that work in a wide variety of ways.

"The forthcoming documentary Meet the Lords shows members doing exactly that. In the 2015-16 session, 710 members spoke in debates, 779 voted in divisions, and 321 were members of select committees. However, parliamentary work is not limited to these activities, and much of it would not leave a record in Hansard.

"All members have to certify that they have undertaken parliamentary work when claiming for attending the House.

"Where members are shown to have claimed when they have not undertaken parliamentary work the House has the power to suspend them - as in the case of Lord Hanningfield. The House has a robust Code of Conduct overseen by the independent Lords Commissioner for Standards."

May in the House of Lords
May in the House of Lords Parliament TV