BHS: Sir Philip Green warns MP Frank Field over settlement disclosure

It is understood that the Arcadia tycoon’s lawyers have contacted Field after the MP made allegations about Green in a radio interview last week.

Field – who led an investigation into last year’s collapse of BHS – claimed to have new confidential evidence pertaining to Green’s £363m pension bailout, a settlement he made with the Pensions Regulator in February.

This prompted Green’s lawyers to caution Field that releasing the information would be a breach of pension and data protection laws.

The interview has now been removed from Talk Radio’s website.

Green has himself contacted Field.

In a letter seen by Retail Week, the tycoon described Field’s radio interview as “disgraceful” and accused him of continuing to make “personal and bitter attacks” against him.

He questioned the MP’s claims that he had new “dynamite evidence”.

“How can this be the case when the document you refer to on the radio is not new; it is a document produced by the Regulator last year?” Green wrote.

“I have no idea what the case you mentioned has to do with me other than to assume you are using it as a further opportunity to attack me.

“I sat in front of your parliamentary hearing for some six hours during which I said I would sort the pension. I believe I have kept my word and, on a strictly voluntary basis, have paid £363m in cash.”

Prior to making the payment, Green had been facing calls to forfeit his knighthood.

Last week, Green’s Arcadia struck a deal with BHS’s liquidators to pay £30m to unsecured creditors following the department store chain’s demise.

More than a year after the retailer’s closure, the majority of its sites remain empty.