MPs deliver a devastating critique of Sir Philip Green's role in the collapse of BHS

No-one emerges from the investigation into the failure of BHS unscathed.

"Directors, advisers and hangers-on" get a pasting, but MPs have decided that one man bears ultimate responsibility for the company's demise, and the finger of blame points firmly in the direction of Monaco.

Sir Philip Green did not own BHS when it went bust in April - he'd sold it a year earlier to Dominic Chappell, a former racing driver with no retail experience or expertise.

MPs judge Chappell a "chancer", the team he assembled, "incompetent and self-serving". The report points out that Chappell and his fellow directors bought the business for £1, invested no money of their own, and walked away richer when it failed.

MPs conclude that Chappell and his fellow directors were "manifestly unsuitable" as owners and furthermore, that Sir Philip Green must have known this but sold BHS to them anyway.

Green argued that the BHS he passed on was basically sound. MPs believe it was anything but, and view the transaction as the financial equivalent of a hospital pass. BHS was persistently and heavily loss-making, cash poor and carrying an unsustainable pension deficit. It was destined to go under.

Sir Philip Green owned BHS for 14 years and MPs believe he neglected it.

The report accuses him of "chronic under-investment", while also extracting "hundreds of millions of pounds out of the business...fantastically enriching himself and his family".

MPs acknowledge that under Green, BHS initially became more profitable, but they decide this was not because he grew the business in any meaningful way.

They point out that neither BHS's turnover nor its market share improved, instead they accuse him of cutting costs, squeezing suppliers and whisking the rewards offshore, away from the taxman, through a series of complex financial arrangements.

When BHS spun into decline, Green failed to revive its fortunes. The pension deficit began to widen and Green ignored repeated requests to increase contributions.

MPs believe that by 2014, BHS had become "a financial millstone and threatened his reputation". They believe he was desperate to offload the business but did so in such a way that its failure was "inevitable".

Around 20,00 pensions are at risk after BHS went into administration. Credit: PA Wire

This is a devastating critique of a man whose skill as an entrepreneur has been loudly trumpeted and widely recognised over the years.

Sir Philip Green, the "unacceptable face of capitalism"? In 2011, David Cameron, then a fresh-faced prime minister, invited Green to sprinkle his magic around Whitehall in the hope of getting civil servants to up their game.

Now MPs are questioning both Sir Philip Green's integrity and his Midas touch, arguing they "found little to support the reputation for retail business acumen for which he received his knighthood".

The report is published on the day that the administrator announces that what remains of BHS's stores will close by August 20.

Some 11,000 jobs are on the way to being lost, 20,000 pensions remain at risk. The Honours Committee and the Cabinet Office will be reading this report closely.

Green will have known something like this was coming. One of the committee chairs, Frank Field, publicly aired his strong feelings repeatedly before the joint inquiry got underway. Green probably wasn't expecting their collective judgement to be quite this damning.