MPs back move to strip retail mogul of knighthood
Sir Philip Green faces the disgrace of being stripped of his knighthood after the House of Commons unanimously backed a move to withdraw his honour. During an impassioned debate yesterday, Sir Philip was branded a “billionaire spiv” and compared to Napoleon, as MP after MP stood to criticise his role in the untimely demise of British Home Stores.
While the vote in the Commons is not binding, it means MPs have asked the body responsible for withdrawing honours to ensure Sir Philip’s knighthood is “cancelled and annulled”. Downing Street has remained neutral over the move but has indicated it believes the Honours Forfeiture Committee may have a decision to make in the future.
The Government also called on Sir Philip to quickly remedy the BHS pension scheme deficit, with
investigations under way into the conduct of the company’s directors and the management of the scheme. BHS went into administration with a £571m pension scheme deficit shortly after being sold for £1 by Sir Philip to serial bankrupt Dominic Chappell.
Setting out his view of what happened, Labour MP Iain Wright said BHS is “one of the biggest corporate scandals of modern times”. The chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee said: “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.”
He said: “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. This drip, drip decline provided the backdrop to Sir Philip’s wish to sell the business.”
In one of the most blistering attacks during the debate, Labour MP David Winnick told colleagues: “I see Green as a billionaire spiv, a billionaire spiv who should never have received a knighthood, a billionaire spiv which has shamed British capitalism, and the least we can do today is to make our views clear and strong.” He questioned how Sir Philip was deemed worthy of a knighthood in the first place, highlighting how the tycoon had put the business in the name of his wife, who lives in Monaco. He went on: “It’s a damning indictment, in my view, of what occurred."
Tory MP Richard Fuller suggested the retail tycoon had failed “to find his moral compass” in not addressing the store’s pension deficit over the summer. Conservative colleague MP Charlie Elphicke said: “The ability of corporate bandits to asset-strip in this way, leaving employees and pensioners and deferred pensioners in the lurch, is one of the key things that needs to be reformed and protected. It’s one of the key reasons that people feel this country works for the Philip Greens of this world rather than the workingclass kids.”
Labour’s Frank Field, who chairs the Work and Pensions Committee, said: “I never knew Napoleon, but 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.” Small business minister Margot James said that if evidence is uncovered indicating any of the directors’ conduct fell below expected standards then action will be taken.
Only Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg spoke out against the vote, albeit from outside the chamber, insisting it amounted to an abuse of the House of Commons. He told BBC news: “The rule of law requires that people, that you may not like, and you may not approve of, are entitled to justice. The House of Commons used to issue bills of attainder which allowed people to be executed on the say so of the House of Commons. It used to have bills of pains and penalties which penalised people on the will of the House of Commons.” He said: “That is not the way we do things now, and I think to call for another committee to strip somebody of an honour, when normal process is that an honour is only taken away if somebody has committed a criminal offence, is an abuse of the House of Commons.”
A spokesman for Sir Philip declined to comment, but the businessman did defend his actions in a letter sent by his holding company Taveta, in which he accused MP Frank Field, who has led the charge against the retail billionaire, of “highly defamatory and false statements” for dragging the tycoon’s Arcadia group into the BHS saga. It also accused Mr Field of causing distress to Arcadia’s 22,000 employees by suggesting Sir Philip was “running Arcadia into the ground like BHS”. The letter said there was “absolutely no substance” to the allegations.