BHS

Lord Myners Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Myners (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an adviser to the Joint Committee of the other place. I welcome the Statement and the early involvement of the Insolvency Service, triggered by the Business Secretary. I hope that we will dig far and dig deep. There are clearly issues here of potential fraudulent preference, creditor preference and misappropriation of corporate assets, under the direction of the directors of the company. These things must be investigated properly, openly and transparently. HMRC must also look into the ownership structure and how it managed to convince itself that these businesses are owned by Lady Green, in tax-free Monte Carlo, but run by her husband from the taxable—but receiving little income—United Kingdom.

I have two questions for the Minister. First, why is the Pensions Regulator requiring seven months to investigate this most outrageous situation? Any sensible person would be able to get to the bottom of this in a couple of months. This regulator has already shown itself to be asleep at the wheel. Ministers must encourage it to give a high priority to this. My second question is: how much is this going to cost the taxpayer?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

The swift answer to the first question is that the Pensions Regulator is independent. We have set up the regulator in an independent way. But of course I share the view that there are questions to be answered here. It is interesting and useful that two committees of the other house are looking into this matter. It is difficult to make an estimate of the cost to the taxpayer but, obviously, a lot of the funds for things such as redundancy can come out of the existing resource. We are hoping to find jobs for those who unfortunately have lost their jobs, and that the administrator will be able to sell on some of the sites, which are often prime high street sites and will be able to be adjusted for other uses.