Sir Philip Green’s appearance in front of MPs this Wednesday was always going to be the highlight of the parliamentary inquiry into the collapse of BHS. Now the stakes have been raised after the work and pensions committee announced it was calling in Green’s retinue to give evidence.
The lucky invitees include Michael Sherwood, Green’s main contact at Goldman Sachs; Neville Kahn, his long-time adviser at the accountants Deloitte; and the restaurateur and Tory donor Richard Caring, who used to own shares in BHS. There are also recalls for Anthony Gutman of Goldman and Lord Grabiner, among others.
A group of MPs is seeking to remove Green’s knighthood unless he puts hundreds of millions of pounds into BHS’s pension scheme, so the pressure is on for a man who protects his reputation fiercely. With Dominic Chappell, who bought BHS from Green for £1, largely discredited, the committee’s work looks like turning into a judgment on Green.
To give Green credit, he hasn’t tried to escape the inquisition, only wavering when the committee chairman, Frank Field, appeared to prejudge the outcome. Expect a pugnacious performance: but with all those advisers lined up to appear, Green’s answers need to be watertight or he’ll be back in the MPs’ dock.
Bank may break silence on Brexit
With a week until the EU referendum, no one expects the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee to make any change to interest rates when it announces its policy decision on Thursday. But what of the minutes of the rate-setting meeting, released at the same time? The civil service went into purdah over the referendum late last month, 28 days before the vote. The Bank isn’t part of the civil service but it has chosen to abide by the same rules. However, the MPC minutes are classed as a regular publication and are therefore exempt.
Mark Carney, the governor, told MPs the MPC would comment on the referendum in the minutes if it was relevant to its inflation target. Carney has already taken political flak over the Bank’s judgments about the economy in the event of Brexit, so one might expect the MPC to hold off from any comments likely to inflame controversy so close to the vote.
But Carney was clearly furious when Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory Leaver, accused him of doing George Osborne’s bidding and called for his resignation. The MPC might be inclined to display its resistance to such pressure if it has fresh thoughts on Brexit.
Special guest in Liverpool
The EU referendum has provided a boost for Liverpool’s festival of business, which kicks off on Monday. Speakers on the first day are a Remain-heavy bunch, including Sir Terry Leahy, the former Tesco boss, and John Holland-Kaye, chief executive of Heathrow.
But lead billing at the biannual event goes to an anonymous senior cabinet minister. With business secretary Sajid Javid already on the list, it looks like the mystery figure will be George Osborne or David Cameron, who gave the keynote speech in 2014.
Whoever it is will apparently use the opportunity to press the business case for staying in the European Union. Liverpool provides an ideal setting for such a speech, with the Remain campaign flagging and desperately needing Labour voters – many of them in the north – to back EU membership on 23 June.
Whoever turns up, the most heavyweight political figure will be Lord Heseltine, who visited Liverpool after the 1981 riots and worked to regenerate the city. Javid might want to discuss his conversion to industrial activism over the steel crisis with Heseltine, whose pledge to “intervene before breakfast, before lunch, before tea and before dinner” was at odds with laissez-faire Thatcherism.
