Sports Direct lodges complaint against former Labour MP, says report

Sports Direct has lodged a complaint against Labour MP Iain Wright over his handling of a Parliamentary inquiry into working practices at the firm’s Shirebrook factory, according to reports.

The Daily Telegraph says that Sports Direct has complained to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standard over Wright’s behaviour when chairing the business, innovation and skills select committee in 2016.

The report says that Sports Direct is claiming that Wright failed to explain a donation he received from the union Unite, which was critical of conditions at the Shirebrook factory, branding them “Victorian”.

Sports Direct also says Wright acted without integrity and “misled” the company over dates when the committee went to inspect the Shirebrook facility.

Mike Ashley, owner of Sports Direct, had a long-running battle with the select committee im 2016 after it was revealed that the firm had been paying its workers below the National Minimum Wage.

Wright has said he received a donation from Unite in 2015, says the Telegraph, but had never been a member of the union and had declared any donations received in the register of members’ interests.

He told the Telegraph: He said: “Two years after we did the inquiry, and a year after I stood down as an MP, I find it quite bizarre.

“I am struggling to understand what Sports Direct’s hopes to gain from this because it revises the bad publicity for [Mike Ashley’s] company.”