Parliament may probe Tesco as BlackRock dumps shares and grocer reveals CFO left in April

Tesco board members could be brought before parliament to explain the £250m black hole in the company's accounts, a senior MP has said, with ex-chief executive Philip Clarke perhaps also asked to give evidence.

The parliamentary business committee may demand a full investigation into retail industry practices as well as question Tesco executives, committee chairman Adrian Bailey told the BBC.

Bailey said the accounting practices that led to the situation were a "stratospheric error" and it was "unbelievable [Tesco] could get themselves into such a mess".

Tesco is already being monitored by the Financial Reporting Council, which may issue a fine and force the FTSE 100 grocer to reissue its results.

Late on Wednesday, after bringing forward the appointment of new chief financial officer Alan Stewart two months earlier than originally planned, it emerged that the recently-ousted Clarke had been in charge of an internal finance committee since April, covering most of the period then the profit over-statement is said to have occurred.

This went against the grocer's insistence on Tuesday that its most recent chief financial officer, Laurie McIlwee, had been in charge of the company's accounts, and that he was still an employee and would remain so until 3 October.

Tesco admitted to CityAM on Wednesday that it had in fact been five months since Mr McIlwee had had "any input to any financial matters".

On Thursday morning, Labour MP Bailey said Tesco chiefs, including chief executive Dave Lewis and chairman Sir Richard Broadbent, could be asked to talk the committee through the company's £250m overstatement of first-half profits and may extend the investigation to the entire industry.

"We may well as a committee want to look at this," he said. "Not just at Tesco but at what is going on in the retail industry and in the relationship with the suppliers to see if the issues we came across two years ago are still there," he said.

Tesco has said it is too early to say whether the misstatement was a case of fraud but its lawyers Freshfields are conducting an investigation alongside accountants Deloitte.

Even before Bailey's plans emerged, Tesco's second-biggest shareholder, BlackRock, began selling down its stake in the company, but still holds 4.98%.

Also on Thursday it emerged that Sports Direct had taken out a put option on Tesco shares, betting that the company would bounce back from its 11-year low.

A recent government report warned of dangerous practices arising from the intensity of UK supermarket competition, putting the country at risk of another potential horsemeat scandal.

The report, commissioned in the wake of revelations last year that some supermarket 'beefburgers' contained high proportions of horsemeat, cautioned that the current "adversarial" approach by some of the larger supermarkets' buying teams have got worse and were "a matter of concern".

The report recommended reforms of the industry to encourage a less aggressive approach from supermarkers on their suppliers.