SIR PHILIP GREEN MPs VOTE TO STRIP ‘BILLIONAIRE SPIV’ OF HIS KNIGHTHOOD
DISGRACED tycoon Sir Philip Green should be stripped of his knighthood, MPs said yesterday after branding him a “billionaire spiv”.
The former BHS boss suffered the humiliation of MPs lining up in a Commons debate to condemn his handling of the collapsed high street chain and its staff’s pension savings.
A call for the Honours Forfeiture Committee, a body independent of the Government, to recommend to the Queen that his 2006 knighthood be “cancelled and annulled” was backed unopposed following three hours of debate.
He is under fire for letting the BHS pension fund slip into a £571million deficit, endangering the financial future of 20,000 members and selling BHS last year for £1 to Retails Acquisitions Ltd – owned by Dominic Chappell, a double bankrupt with no retail experience.
The firm, which employed 11,000 people, went into administration in April this year and its last stores shut in August.
The unprecedented Commons motion, which also criticised BHS governance and called on Sir Philip to resolve the pension fund crisis, is nonbinding and cannot require any action to be taken.
But the MPs hope to encourage the Forfeiture Committee to remove Sir Philip’s knighthood while also piling pressure on the retailer to make good his repeated promises to “sort” the pension fund black hole.
He is accused of taking some £400million in dividends out of the BHS business for his family but letting the pension fund slide into crisis.
Earlier this week the tycoon, who caused anger over the summer by being pictured relaxing on his luxury superyacht, tried to head off MPs’ fury by declaring how sorry he was for the “hardship and sadness” caused to staff.
He is reportedly poised for further talks with Pensions Regulator officials on sorting out the BHS pension.
But in response to a highly critical joint report from MPs on the Business and Work and Pensions Committees, his lawyers have insisted that the dividends were lawful and paid at a time when BHS pension schemes were in surplus.
In the Commons, Labour MP David Winnick said: “I see Green as a billionaire spiv, a billionaire spiv who should never have received a knighthood, a billionaire spiv who has shamed British capitalism and the least we can do today is to make our views clear and strong.”
Labour MP Ian Wright, who chairs the Commons Business Committee, said: “He (Sir Philip) took the rings from BHS’s fingers, he beat it black and blue, he starved it of food and water, he put it on life support and then he wanted credit for keeping it alive.
“His extraction of value early on in his ownership made the company less able to innovate, to retain a market share or have a competitive place in the retail market, which would allow the firm to generate the profits and be in more of a position to survive the growing pension deficit.”
Tory MP Richard Fuller said the tycoon had failed “to find his moral compass” in not yet addressing the pension deficit.
Labour’s Karen Buck said: “What I want to see more than anything – more than further damage to Sir Philip Green’s reputation, more than his humiliation, more than the removal of his knighthood – is the money.”
The Work and Pensions Committee chairman, Labour’s Frank Field, branded Sir Philip a “very successful traditional asset-stripper”. He added: “In my mind’s eye this was a character most like the Napoleon I read about in the history books while I was at school.”
A spokesman for Sir Philip declined to comment.
‘A billionaire spiv who should never have received a knighthood’
AFTER a damning debate in the House of Commons, MPs have voted to recommend that Sir Philip Green be stripped of his knighthood. The honours forfeiture committee, which has the final say, would be foolish to disregard the points made and the conclusion reached.
Sir Philip has treated BHS staff appallingly. Since the collapse of the firm he has behaved with arrogance and seeming indifference.
And having promised MPs he would sort out the company’s pension deficit he has failed to do so.
Honours should go to people who do not just excel in their chosen field but who have made a lasting contribution to British society.
They should not be given to people who appear to behave with a complete lack of basic human decency.