A letter sent to Frank Field MP by ‘Sir’ Philip Green’s lawyers.
25 July 2016
URGENT
Dear Sir
SIR PHILIP GREEN
We act for Sir Philip Green and write with reference to your interview on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning.
In that interview you alleged that our client had stolen money, specifically from the BHS and Arcadia pension funds. This statement is highly defamatory and completely false.
Our client has never stolen any money from BHS, Arcadia or the pension funds and you know that. In particular, there is nothing in the recent Report of the Work and Pensions and Business, Innovation and Skills Committees, (the Report) (of which you were one of the Chairs) to support your allegation.
Clearly an allegation that our client is a thief is likely to cause him serious harm.
Further, in relation to the recent Parliamentary hearings and the Report and allegations made there you were protected by privilege. That does not apply to the interview this morning (or any others you intend to make).
In the circumstances, our client requires an immediate and fulsome apology in relation to the allegation (to be agreed in terms of the content and manner by this firm in advance of publication).
We look forward to hearing from you on this point within 24 hours. This matter is clearly urgent as your defamatory statements are being repeated in the media, for which you are undoubtedly liable.
The other remedies to which our client is clearly entitled will very much depend on form and manner of your response and in the meantime, all of our client’s rights are reserved.
Please acknowledge receipt.
Yours faithfully
SCHILLINGS
Frank Field, we learn, made comments about the way in which ‘Sir’ Philip Green ran BHS (into the ground). I don’t think it would be wise for me to repeat them because the old rogue might sue me too. This is Britain today, where the “unacceptable face of capitalism” (Green) can attempt to threaten and so control on the basis of his obscene wealth.
Whatever happens with the legal case, Green’s name is mud and so it should be. I ventured into our local BHS store tonight and saw nothing that caught my eye other than the poor staff who are about to lose their jobs. The poor staff who earn barely more than the national minimum wage, whose pensions have been shafted (don’t forget that the BHS pension scheme was in credit when Green bought the company) and who face a bleak future were working hard to sell what was left in the stores, including fixtures and fittings. I felt like coming across all Ken Dodd, announcing loudly: “How tickled I am. What a great day for walking into a BHS store and shouting ‘Philip Green is a c***'” The C word is probably the most unpleasant word of them all, but I can’t think of a more appropriate one by which to describe Green.
The women behind the tills were unfailingly polite and attentive, despite the uncertain futures they face. In the meantime, Green is swanning round the Med on one of his three luxury yachts, to all intents and purposes laughing in the faces of the people he has dumped on.
As the waves lap gently on Green’s boat, I wonder how his guests feel about him. I wonder if they have the slightest clue about ordinary, decent people scratching a living in a failing store a thousand miles away. They will surely know, as we all know, what Green has done to their lives. When they are knocking back the caviar and the Moet & Chandon will they even give it a thought? What do you think?
An allegation that Green is a thief will cause him serious harm, says his lawyers. Well, perhaps it would, in which case, hard luck. I am making no such allegation since I have no evidence he is a thief, but I do know he is a lowlife in high finance, someone who has accrued a fortune on the backs of others and if comparisons with Robert Maxwell are unfair, I’ll ask his lawyers to explain why.
Green, the billionaire, can employ the best lawyers money can buy. The poor bloody workers have no such privilege, they just do what they’re told. And there lies Britain, a fiercely divided nation and becoming more divided by the day. We have the haves, the have somethings and the have nothings.
“An allegation that our client is a thief is likely to cause him serious harm”? Really? How so? He has more money and influence than God, he can do what he likes.
Within the fading remnants of our democracy, there is precious little we can do to face down the real power-brokers in Britain. But we can take away his knighthood. It might seem like nothing but it would surely piss him off and if that’s the best we can do, take it away.
Green is not just the unacceptable face of capitalism but also the unacceptable face of Britain. He will win in the end because money talks so the best we can hope for is to diminish him with little things like removing his knighthood which he should never have received in the first place.
