Iain Wright has been a busy man. The chairman of parliament’s business, innovation and skills select committee has just co-authored the 60-page report into the collapse of retailer BHS with counterparts on the work and pensions committee, as well as a similarly scathing 33-page account of the working conditions at Sports Direct.

He is so pleased with the product that he refers to the BHS document as “my Sgt Pepper” – quite a claim given that the Beatles’ 1967 long player is often hailed as a work of genius. Still, a bit like the famous album, he can point to how certain concepts run neatly through his two releases.

The Sports Direct report, published last Friday, concluded that the founder and majority owner, Mike Ashley, had been running the company like a Victorian workhouse and building his success on a business model that failed to pay workers the national minimum wage and treated them “without dignity or respect”.

BHS followed on Monday, when MPs found that the department store had been subjected to “systematic plunder” by former owners including Sir Philip Green, who gave “insufficient priority” to the BHS pension scheme that slumped to a £571m deficit.

“It is coincidental,” Wright says of the two reports being published almost simultaneously, “but [there are] common themes about a dominant individual who’s grown a business, or certainly controls a business, and really doesn’t listen to any advice.

“It’s ‘my way of the highway’, sort of thing. I’m really glad that there are different people now, whether it’s the Institute of Directors [or] the new prime minister, saying that this has to be at the top of the agenda. It’s not acceptable, this.”

Certainly the timing of the two reports looks opportune for Wright – in three ways.

First, there was the Tory leadership stump speech by Theresa May which put corporate responsibility back on the Westminster agenda.

Second, there was last month’s referendum result, which Wright partly attributes to an increasing number of people outside south-east England viewing the economy as something that no longer works for them.

“Thirty years ago [if I was a worker in the north east], I knew I had a job and a stable career path. I knew I could start off sweeping the factory and I could end up getting a really respectable job. Now that’s gone and people are angry about that and – you know what – I can see it. I can absolutely see why ... The tragedy is [the referendum vote is] not going to change all that, is it?”

And third, Wright’s reports have arrived at precisely the time he has begun angling to become the chairman of what is likely to become a re-jigged business committee - one that will also take in energy and industrial strategy to reflect the new scope of the government department. “I’ve expressed my interest,” he says.

The MP’s ambition to continue leading the work he has started looks to stem from enjoying taking on the UK’s biggest corporate names (“In both the inquiries, BHS and Sports Direct, the select committee system was on trial. I think we’ve passed that”), plus a genuine interest in the topic, as you might expect from somebody who began professional life as a chartered accountant.

Wright says he is planning follow-up inquiries from the autumn that will focus on themes of improving corporate governance standards as well as enhancing workers’ rights.

“I want a Labour government. But most of all I want to see the economy work for everyone, rather than just people on yachts,” he says. “How do we use the rules, and how do we use corporate governance, to make sure that companies are better run in the interests not just of these dominant personalities but for the good of the entire company?”

He hopes that his BHS and Sports Direct reports will become part of that process. “There are two things to happen. One in our court, the other in other courts,” he says. “First is we need to make sure these [reports] don’t sit on the shelf and are used by the government in order to improve the framework in which business operates ... It’s a case of putting pressure on the government to say this is what is happening in Britain’s economy in the 21st century. It’s not acceptable. What are we going to do about it?

“The second thing is ... where we are going to pass it over to the likes of [HM Revenue & Customs]. We can’t prosecute. We’re not judges. In respect of Mike Ashley, HMRC are looking at [the retailer not paying the national minimum wage]. The Health and Safety executive should be looking at the allegations of women giving birth in toilets [at Sports Direct] and stuff like that.

“And with regards to Philip Green, there are a variety of investigations going on: the Serious Fraud Office are interested [the agency is examining if there might be a case to bring around the BHS collapse]. The Insolvency Service [which has the power to ban directors] are interested. These are two distinct things. We put pressure on at a parliamentary level. Enforcement agencies need to look at this as part of investigations to see if prosecutions are needed.”

The words suddenly seem quite measured, considering there have already been comments from fellow committee members that have compared Green to Robert Maxwell, the great plunderer of pensions. Wright’s co-chairman on the BHS enquiry, Frank Field, described Green as “worse than Robert Maxwell” and Green has threatened to sue him. Does Wright agree?

He ducks. “Where I agree with Frank … it’s a question of scale …. It all comes back to corporate governance and weak challenge … there are all these dominant individuals that just want to bulldoze their way through.”

So it is back to the Wright concept of challenging autocratic bosses – although it not a rule he applies universally.

Apart from members of the Fab Four, the Hartlepool MP mentions one other hero, a former manager of his local football team, Hartlepool United, who he describes as “fantastic”. That idol is, of course, the tyrannical genius that was Brian Clough.