Cue violins! Shameless Sir Shifty wants us to sympathise with HIM
BHS collapse has given the billionaire and his wife and children a ‘horrible time’
PhiliP Green begged for sympathy last night, claiming he and his family have endured a ‘horrible time’ since the collapse of BhS.
Ahead of MPs debating whether to strip him of his knighthood tomorrow, the Topshop tycoon said he was both sad and sorry for the 11,000 BhS workers who lost their jobs.
And the man dubbed Sir Shifty again vowed to plug the failed store chain’s pension deficit and help 22,000 members who face lower payouts.
But he said the affair had taken a toll on his wife Tina and their children Chloe and Brandon. ‘The misery of dealing with this on a daily basis is not fun,’ he told iTN’s political editor Robert Peston.
Sir Philip admitted it was a ‘horrid decision’ to sell BhS for a pound to three times bankrupt Dominic Chappell in March 2015 – a year before it collapsed.
Asked about the effect on his family, who spent much of the summer on their new £100million superyacht, he said: ‘it’s horrible. But at the end of the day, i haven’t run away. i’m here, i’m sitting
‘Trying to wriggle off the hook’
here with you. i’m happy to look you straight in the eye. i want to fix this pension solution more than anybody in the world, right. i believe with goodwill on both sides we can fix it.’
The billionaire also revealed that six days before he was grilled by MPs in June he had a heart operation.
he said he did not use the stent procedure as an excuse to postpone the hearing, adding: ‘i stood up to what i had to go and do and i will continue to stand up to things i am being asked to do – i’m not running.’
Yesterday the tycoon was accused of ‘wriggling’ after being cleared by a report he himself commissioned into the collapse of BhS.
A report by MPs in July had been damning of his conduct.
iain Wright, the labour chairman of the Commons business committee, said: ‘The report from Sir Philip Green’s no doubt expensively appointed lawyers is just the latest wheeze by Sir Philip to wriggle off the hook for his responsibilities to BhS pension holders.
‘This legalistic opinion doesn’t question the facts of the unanimously agreed select committee report but it does mirror Sir Philip’s litany of excuses for the collapse of BhS and for his delay in sorting the BhS pension deficit.’
Frank Field, the labour chairman of the work and pensions committee who has led calls for Sir Philip to be stripped of his knighthood, said the parliamentary report had been ‘based on huge amounts of evidence’. Sir Philip’s lawyers accused MPs of making ‘very serious factual and legal errors’ when they drew up their report on BhS. They said the criticism was ‘bizarre and unsupportable’ and concluded that the decision by Sir Philip and lady Green to extract more than £400million in dividends from BhS was lawful.
last night questions were raised on social media about Sir Philip’s report when it emerged that lord Pannick, the co-author, and his wife are close friends of lord Grabiner – the chairman of Sir Philip’s Arcadia group retail empire.
Pictures circulated on Twitter of the three of them at a drinks reception. One MP pointed out that lord Pannick has represented disgraced tycoon Tiny Roland, who, like Sir Philip, has been branded the ‘unacceptable face of capitalism’. lord Pannick reveals his friendship with lord Grabiner and Baroness Brady, also a board member of Arcadia, in the report.
The co-author, Michael Todd, also explains in the dossier that he is a long-term friend and colsuggest league of lord Grabiner. in their report, MPs saved some of their most withering criticism for lord Grabiner, describing him as complacent and his performance as deplorable.
But lord Pannick and Mr Todd disagreed, saying it was wrong to the peer had ‘greater powers than other board members’.
Their report concluded that there was ‘nothing unlawful, improper, or even unusual’ about Sir Philip’s decision to sell BhS.
last night there were fresh calls to strip the tycoon of his knighthood, with 11 MPs supporting the sanction so far.
Richard Fuller, a member of the business committee, said: ‘it would be entirely appropriate if Sir Philip is stripped of his knighthood, which was awarded for services to retail.’
Fellow Tory Anna Soubry told iTV: ‘he is the embodiment of what is so wrong with the worst bits of British business. i don’t mind people making money – i do have a problem with people being greedy, and it’s as simple as that. i think he’s really rather revoltingly greedy’
A statement issued by Sir Philip’s holding company, Taveta investments, said: ‘The Taveta directors very much regret the terrible impact that the failure of BhS has had on former BhS staff and BhS pensioners and we accept that, with hindsight, it was a mistake to sell BhS to Retail Acquisitions limited and Dominic Chappell.
‘But it was an honest mistake and the sale was made in good faith to a buyer who retained a large team of well-known professional advisers, including Olswang and Grant Thornton.’
‘Revoltingly greedy’