Strip Sir Shifty of his knighthood, say MPs
Calls grow as further murky revelations emerge over BHS scandal
HAUNTED and unshaven, Sir Philip Green cuts a sorry figure as the crisis around the collapse of BHS deepened last night.
As MPs called for the tycoon to be stripped of his knighthood, damning evidence emerged of how he failed to tell regulators about the true scale of the doomed company’s pensions black hole.
Sir Philip, pictured here at his London offices this week in his first appearance in the country for six weeks, obfuscated and dodged questions about the liabilities when he sold BHS to a former bankrupt last year, according to documents released by MPs.
As pressure mounted on Sir Philip, who faces questioning by a Parliamentary select committee next week, it was revealed that:
Backbench Tory MPs are poised to write to the Honours Forfeiture Committee to call for the billionaire to have his gong removed unless he pays back the hundreds of millions of pounds he made from BHS;
There was anger over claims that Sir Philip could have saved the department stores by letting them be sold to his rival, Sports Direct boss Mike Ashley, but let personal animosity get in the way of a deal;
An internal email shows that at a key stage in the talks over the BHS sale, Sir Philip’s advisers failed to declare the full scale of the company’s pensions black hole;
Sir Philip failed to reply to a letter from pension regulators demanding to know about the sale of BHS;
The taxpayer faces a bill of up to £36 million over the BHS collapse.
MPs last night called a string of new witnesses to give evidence to Parliamentary hearings into how BHS went bust, including Mr Ashley.
The 88-year-old department store chain collapsed in April, leaving 11,000 jobs at risk and a £571million pension deficit. Up to 20,000 workers face losing 10 per cent of their retirement income after the pension scheme was passed to the lifeboat Pension Protection Fund.
This week, MPs heard a series of damning revelations about the sale of BHS by Sir Philip to three-times bankrupt Dominic Chappell, who claimed he ‘went insane’ over the prospect of a resale to Mr Ashley..
Sir Philip is also alleged to have blocked a bid to buy BHS by a consortium including Matalan founder John Hargreaves. A friend of Sir Philip said he denied the claim.
Last night, further evidence emerged about the sale of BHS and the steps taken to protect the pensions of former employees.
A series of emails presented to MPs shows how Sir Philip’s right-hand men – Paul Budge and Goldman’s Sachs banker Anthony Gutman – failed to provide Mr Chappell with full details of the scheme’s black hole. Mr Budge described how Mr Chappell understood the black hole to be £50million, when at the time it was closer to £207million.
Meanwhile, documents from The Pensions Regulator describe how there had been no mention of a potential sale of BHS by Sir Philip’s advisers during key discussions about restructuring the pension scheme. Even the scheme’s trustees were not aware of its problems.
Greg Mulholland, a senior Liberal Democrat MP, said: ‘If someone has been given an honour for services to an industry and they then are deemed to have damaged that industry, they should lose that honour.’
Labour MP John Mann, who sits on the Treasury select committee, said: ‘He should hand back his knighthood or face being stripped of it.’
In response, Sir Philip accused MPs of ‘bullying and blackmail’ and threatened to pull out of next week’s evidence session if he continued to be ‘prejudged’. He denied Mr Chappell’s claims that he called in administrators at BHS because he did not want the retail chain falling into Mr Ashley’s hands and was ‘not aware’ of any offer from him.
Comment – Page 16
‘Bullying and blackmail’