The former Labour peer Nazir Ahmed has been charged with two counts of attempted rape dating back to the 1970s.

Lord Ahmed, 61, is also charged with one count of indecent assault. His alleged victims were a girl and a boy aged under 13.

The alleged offences are said to have taken place in Rotherham between 1971 and 1974, when Ahmed was a teenager.

He and two other men, Mohammed Farouq, 68, and Mohammed Tariq, 63, both from Rotherham, were charged as part of a South Yorkshire police investigation that began in 2016.

The Crown Prosecution Service said Ahmed was charged with indecently assaulting a boy aged under 13 in 1971-72, when he was aged 14 to 15.

He is alleged to have committed the two attempted rapes, at least one of which was against a girl, in 1973-74 when he was aged 16 to 17.

Ahmed, a married father of three, was born in Pakistan and moved with his family to the UK in 1969 to join his father, who was working in steel factories in Rotherham.

He joined the Labour party in 1975 aged 18 and became Rotherham’s first Asian councillor in 1990, later becoming the town’s youngest magistrate. He was made a made a peer by Tony Blair in 1998 and was one of the first Muslims to be appointed to the Lords.

South Yorkshire police said Ahmed, Farouq and Tariq were due to appear at Sheffield magistrates court on 19 March.

Farouq is charged with four counts of indecently assaulting a boy under 13. Tariq is charged with two counts of indecently assaulting a boy under 13.