BHS' directors and advisers to be questioned by MPs as hearing into retailer's collapse begins

Lord Grabiner, the chairman of Sir Philip Green's Arcadia retail business, will be among those answering questions at Westminster on Monday (23 May) as MPs probe the role BHS advisers and directors played before the embattled high street retailer was sold for £1 last year.

BHS was bought by Dominic Chappell's Retail Acquisitions, even though Chappell had been declared bankrupt twice and had no previous experience in retail. Grabiner, a long-time associate of the former BHS owner, has agreed to appear before the Commons business and work and pensions committees even though he has repeatedly stressed he was not involved in the sale of the retailer.

On Monday, MPs are expected to focus on the role Arcadia directors played in the lead-up to the sale of BHS and on the advice they received. The group's pension advisers will be among those giving evidence at Westminster, after the collapse of the high street retailer in April left a £571m ($829.3m, €738.1m) deficit in the group's pension scheme.

Some 11,000 jobs and 164 stores are considered to be at risk after BHS entered administration and business select committee chairman Iain Wright said some "real questions" over Green's and Arcadia's role in the demise had to be answered.

"We've not jumped to any conclusions whatsoever," Wright told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "We're going to listen very carefully to the answers from our questions and find out what the evidence suggests."

Green himself will answer MPs' questions on 15 June, while BHS management, the board of Retail Acquisitions, and its owner, Chappell, will give evidence a week earlier.