Sir Shifty ‘still hasn’t submitted a plan to rescue BHS pensions’

As Sir Shifty moans his family have had a ‘horrible’ time since the fall of BHS...

SIR Philip Green has failed to submit a concrete offer to rescue the BHS pension scheme, a Government minister claimed last night.

The revelation by pensions minister Richard Harrington flies in the face of claims by Green that he would ‘sort’ a deal to fix the company’s £571million black hole.

On Tuesday night, Green repeatedly claimed he would rescue the pension fund and said he was ‘in very strong dialogue with the regulator for a solution’.

But less than 24 hours later, Mr Harrington said: ‘I do understand that there has been no written offer from him [Green], but things can change.

‘It’s not for me to get involved with what the regulator is doing on this – it’s my job to wait and see what happens.’

Green has repeatedly pledged to solve the problem and save the nest eggs of the fund’s 20,000-plus pensioners. During a Parliamentary inquiry into BHS’s collapse in June, he said: ‘We will sort it, we will find a solution and I want to give an assurance to the 20,000 pensioners that I’m there to sort this.’

But several months have passed with no sign of a deal any nearer to being struck.

The behaviour of the billionaire tycoon – dubbed Sir Shifty by critics – has come under intense scrutiny after he sold BHS to thrice-bankrupt former racing driver Dominic Chappell last year.

And last night, Green was facing the ultimate humiliation as it emerged almost 50 MPs have backed calls to strip him of his knighthood over the destruction of BHS.

Politicians of all parties have rushed to show their support in an effort to force Commons Speaker John Bercow to stage the first-ever vote in Parliament today on removing an honour. MPs will today debate the tycoon’s role in the retailer’s demise.

Labour MP Stephen Kinnock said: ‘Philip Green was knighted for his services to retail and British business, but it seems his main service has been to himself and yacht salesmen.

‘What we see here is not about rewards for failure, but rewards for destruction. Stripping Green of his undeserved knighthood would make it clear that these kind of practices have no place in modern Britain.’

The vote in Parliament, if it goes ahead, will not be binding. But MPs hope it will put pressure on the secretive Honours Forfeiture committee to take action.

Ultimately the decision to remove an honour rests with the Queen.

Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia company sold BHS for £1 last year and we all know what happened next. The High Street retail chain collapsed in April with the loss of 11,000 jobs and a smoking hole where the company pension pot should have been.

Want to know something, else? it’s been an absolute nightmare. The anguish has been biblical. The agony incomparable.

No, not for those who lost their livelihoods and pensions, and are still worried about where their next pair of shoes or even meal might come from.

No, we mean for poor Sir Philip Green and his long-suffering family.

in an iTV interview this week, Sir Philip talked for the first time about how events have affected him and his nearest and dearest, describing the past year as ‘horrible’.

The usually belligerent Sir Shifty was in a mellow mood — and not just, presumably, because Parliament will today debate whether to strip him of his knighthood.

‘i am sad. i am very, very, very sorry,’ he said, as an aide, we can only imagine, waved a sliced onion under his nose.

Green, you see, never meant any of this to happen and upon reflection, he said, he now thinks the BHS sale was a mistake.

‘But we made that decision,’ he said, ‘and, you know, for the last year, and on a daily basis, i, and my family, have got to live with this horrid decision, and trust me, these are not fun days.’

really? You might think that if the Green family are suffering an annus horribilis, they’ve got a funny way of showing it.

For Sir Shifty, his wife Tina, and their pampered daughter, Chloe, 25, and son, Brandon, 23, life has gone on pretty much as it did before..

Ever since BHS went into administration, the Greens seem to have been enjoying one long party.

There have been hot-and-cold-running, multi-million-pound yachts, champagne-soaked parties in all the fleshpots of Europe, private jets, baubles, bubbles, gourmet restaurants and amusements galore.

But perhaps we are too quick to judge. Perhaps, just perhaps, the family has hidden their sadness deep inside, plastered on a smile and vowed that, even in the platinum-plated fast lane of life, the show must go on.

After all, it seems, Sir Shifty, Lady Shifty and their pair of little Shifties want you to know that they are hurting. That they are victims, too.

You may mock, but perhaps Lady Green chooses to wear black sequins to all those parties because she is, actually, in mourning for BHS.

And while we have all heard about the healing power of crystals, maybe just maybe Lady Shifty believes in the curative energy of diamonds, which is why she wears always seems to wear so many.

Meanwhile, could it be the case that Chloe hides her pain behind designer clothes and a perma-pout, while Brandon snuggles up to international supermodels only so that he can cry on their shoulders?

Here we present this year’s postcards from the Greens. Judge for yourself just how ‘horrible’ life has been for them...