Sports Direct bugging scandal ‘more Austin Powers than James Bond’

MPs from the Business and Skills Committee have paid a surprise visit to Sports Direct’s Shirebrook warehouse – and are claiming a meeting they held at the site was bugged.

While Sports Direct had been expecting a visit from the MPs it wasn’t told when they would arrive.

MPs only gave notice on Monday morning that they would be making a spot check on working practices.

According to reports, MPs are accusing Sports Direct of planting recording device to listen in on a private meeting.

Throughout the summer, bosses at Sports Direct, including Mike Ashley, clashed with MPs on the Business and Skills Committee over reports of unlawful working practices at its Shirebrook plant.

It agreed that its investigation into working practices at Shirebrook plant should be widened after the firm received the initial report from its legal advisers RPC.

According to reports, Mike Ashley is out of the country on business, but when MPs from the Committee called him after the incident he allegedly accused them of planting the device.

MP Anna Turley, a member of the Committee posted the following tweet yesterday afternoon, after reportedly seeing a member of Sports Direct staff place a bugging device on the floor when she brought a tray of sandwiches into the MPs’ meeting.

“I couldn’t believe it”, Ms Turley told The Telegraph. “I watched her put the device on the floor and when she left I said ‘bloody hell guys they are trying to record us’. It’s not James Bond, more Austin Powers.”

Here is the camera I found which was placed under the stool on which the sandwiches were placed for our private meeting at #sportsdirectpic.twitter.com/aD6StnX5T9

— Anna Turley MP (@annaturley) November 7, 2016