Sir Philip Green needs to offer cash to BHS pension scheme members to mitigate MPs’ brutal verdict

The billionaire retailer is set to face fierce criticism in an imepending report from two select committees on the demise of BHS and a flurry of recent correpsondence won’t change that.

Sir Philip Green and wife Tina Green at a wedding ceremony in Monaco (Getty)

The bell has been rung to open another round in the heavyweight boxing match pitting MPs on two select committees in the red, blue and yellow corner against Sir Philip Green, in, of course, the green corner.

Frank Field’s Work & Pensions Committee and Iain Wright’s Business, Innovation & Skills Committee, or whatever it’s going called now that Theresa May’s finished with her re-shuffling, have published a lengthy list of correspondence submitted by Sir Philip and others.

The centre piece is a letter from Sir Philip answering a long list of questions that were raised by the two committee chairs following Sir Philip’s appearance before a joint hearing.

It details more than £400m of investment made by the Green empire into BHS and highlights an offer to kick in £5m to help facilitate a potential purchase of the business from its administrators by Mike Ashley and his Sports Direct.

Sir Philip also insists that he pushed for a “sustainable solution” for the doomed retailer’s troubled pension scheme which is at the centre of the scandal.

His letter can be summarised thus: we put pots of cash into BHS, gave it all the love in the world. We really, really wanted the best for it when we sold it on and we were still trying to help even after the new owners got into bother.

Oh, and we also took some dividends out. Quite a lot of dividends. But remember, we put pots of cash into BHS, gave it all the love in the world, and so on. Did I mention that we paid lots of tax too? Well we did.

Now, if you’d just leave us alone we’ll see if we can’t get something done to help the pension scheme members who loyally served BHS for years and whose work went towards paying those dividends. That wasn’t in the letter, but it has been the message emanating fro the Green camp for some time now.

Those pension scheme members, and BHS staff in general, were probably less than happy to see Sir Philip’s wife Tina pictured a couple of days ago while living it up on their gaudy new yacht “Lionheart” in Malta. They could probably suggest other body parts that ought to come after “Lion” while they try to find new jobs in post-Brexit Britain and consider the damage done to their pensions.

Wth what is expected to be a damning report due soon, Sir Philip, having failed to control the MPs’ investigation, is now trying to show he’s done everything he can to assist them. What a guy!

As Mr Field noted archly: “Sir Philip is aware we are writing our report and is suddenly volunteering all manner of last-minute assistance.”

The subtext to that statement? We’re going to let rip anyway, so it isn’t going to do him a lot of good.

At this point the only thing that might help restore a reputation that is getting more battered by the day would be for Sir Philip to unveil a comprehensive package that ensures those poor BHS pensioners don’t lose out. He needs to put his hand in his pocket, a point made repeatedly by Mr Field.

This is a bout whose winner will be decided on points by judges in the court of public opinion. They’ll be watching what happens to the pension scheme members closely.