Sir Philip Green's complaint against peer who outed him in Parliament dismissed

Sir Philip Green’s complaint against a Labour peer who named him as the businessman at the centre of allegations of sexual harassment and racial abuse has been dismissed.

Lord Hain was accused of failing to declare an interest when he identified the retail tycoon in Parliament last October, while Sir Philip's lawyers also argued his statement should have been seen as providing a Parliamentary service for money.

Both were dismissed by the House of Lords Standards Commissioner.

Topshop owner Sir Philip was named by the former Northern Ireland secretary as the businessman protected by a Court of Appeal injunction which was preventing the Daily Telegraph from publishing his name.

Lord Hain said today: "Sir Philip's complaint always was a malevolent ruse to divert attention from the harassment allegations against him by his employees.

"I'm grateful to the Standards Commissioner for finding that the complaint was entirely false."

Sir Philip has "categorically and wholly" denied being guilty of any "unlawful sexual or racist behaviour".

His lawyers complained that Lord Hain had failed to declare his role as a global and governmental adviser to law firm Ince Gordon Dadds, who were acting for Telegraph Media Group in the case.

They also said Lord Hain's statement should be regarded as providing a parliamentary service for money and that it had broken the sub judice rules in an abuse of parliamentary privilege.

After a preliminary assessment, Commissioner Lucy Scott-Moncrieff rejected the allegation of providing paid parliamentary services and said that the issues of sub judice and parliamentary privilege were not matters for her to judge.

In a report released on Monday, Ms Scott-Moncrieff dismissed the remaining allegation of failure to declare an interest after receiving evidence from Lord Hain that he was not aware of Ince Gordon Dadds' involvement in the Green case.

"It would be unreasonable to censure him for failing to declare an interest of which he was unaware," she said.

Additional reporting by Press Association