Philip Green named as man facing #MeToo allegations

Retail billionaire and Arcadia Group owner Philip Green has been named in Parliament as the man facing newspaper allegations of sexual harassment.

Green was named by Lord Peter Hain who said he felt a “duty” to name Green under the protection of parliamentary privilege after being contacted by someone “intimately involved in the case”.

Earlier this week the Telegraph ran a front page splash citing an unnamed businessman accused of bullying, racially abusing and sexually harassing staff, but was prevented from naming the individual following a super-injunction upheld by Master of the Rolls Sir Terence Etherton, the second most senior judge in England and Wales.

The Telegraph said it had conducted interviews with five people who claimed the businessman had paid “substantial sums” in return for them signing NDAs.

Hain told the House of Lords: “My Lords, having been contacted by someone intimately involved in the case of a powerful businessman using non-disclosure agreements and substantial payments to conceal the truth about serious and repeated sexual harassment, racist abuse and bullying, which is compulsively continuing, I feel it’s my duty under parliamentary privilege to name Philip Green as the individual in question given that the media have been subject to an injunction preventing publication of the full details of this story which is clearly in the public interest.”

Green is the chairman of the Arcadia Group, a retail empire that includes Topshop, Topman, Wallis, Evans, Miss Selfridge and Dorothy Perkins.