‘Hypocrite’ Brady is urged to speak out in Green row
TORY peer Karren Brady is facing calls to appear before MPs to answer questions over alleged sexual harassment inside Sir Philip Green’s business empire.
Baroness Brady chairs the holding company behind the Topshop tycoon’s retail business but has remained silent over claims he bullied employees and racially abused others
Questions have been raised about whether she knew about ‘substantial’ payments made to company executives who signed non- disclosure agreements (NDAs) as part of settlement deals. Some payouts reportedly topped £1 million.
The Apprentice star also faced accusations of ‘rank hypocrisy’ after she used a newspaper column to attack men accused of sexual misconduct, and promoted herself as a role model for professional women.
Sources inside Arcadia have claimed Sir Philip was ‘very physical’ with female employees, mocked women over their weight and asked female executives in meetings if they were ‘naughty girls’ and if they ‘needed their bottoms slapped’.
Sir Philip, 66, denies any unlawful sexual or racist behaviour and said he had never intentionally gone beyond good-humoured ‘banter’ with his staff. He told The Mail on Sunday that he and wife Tina were ‘horrified’ by the scandal, which he described as ‘a horror story’ and ‘the worst week of my life’. He said: ‘I’m very, very upset. I’m being used as target practice.’
Sir Philip was named last week as the businessman who had taken out an injunction to prevent a newspaper publishing articles about his alleged harassment of staff.
He denied the claims but has admitted that his Arcadia Group had sometimes used confidentiality agreements to settle complaints from employees.
Baroness Brady, 49, took over as chairman of Taveta Investments, the holding company behind Arcadia, last year and had been on its board since 2010.
Labour MP Jess Phillips, a member of the women and equalities committee, said: ‘She needs to come forward and say what she did and did not know, and she needs to make sure that she has never backed the silencing of complainants.’
Fellow Labour MP John Mann said it would be ‘helpful’ if Baroness Brady was called before MPs on the Commons business, energy and
‘Veneer of acceptability’
industrial strategy committee. Journalist Oliver Shah, whose book about Sir Philip, Damaged Goods, contained allegations of bullying and intimidation at Arcadia, accused Baroness Brady of ‘rank hypocrisy’.
Writing in The Sunday Times, he said: ‘The rank hypocrisy of the way she positions herself as a role model for professional women – while working for a man who is obviously a misogynist – would be astonishing had she not made a long career out of providing a veneer of acceptability for grubby men, starting with the pornographers David Sullivan and David Gold, who still employ her at West Ham United Football Club.’
West Ham chief executive Baroness Brady has used her column in The Sun newspaper to criticise men accused of sexual misconduct, including movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. She wrote: ‘[ They] behave like this because they have a fundamental lack of respect for others. It is also because they think they can get away with it. And until now they have been allowed to.
‘In fact, their behaviour has frequently been covered up for them. One thing that bothers me about several recent resignations and sackings is this: Employers have acted not because of what these men did but because the public found out.’
Sir Philip has been staying at a spa resort in Arizona since he was named in the House of Lords by Lord Hain. He said any suggestion of sexual harassment was ‘nonsense’ and criticised Lord Hain as ‘irresponsible’.
Dozens of former Labour Party staff have signed non- disclosure agreements which ban them from speaking about sexist and racist behaviour, it was revealed yesterday.
The so-called gagging orders have been used to stop disgruntled officials from going public about harassment, bullying and antiSemitism complaints within the party, The Sunday Times reported.