The boss of British Gas’s parent company has said there is “no point” trying to justify his £4.5 million pay package, as he recognised that many of his customers were struggling to pay their bills.Chris O’Shea, who runs Centrica, told BBC Breakfast that “you can’t justify a salary of that size”.
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00:00 So look, it's a huge amount of money. I am incredibly fortunate. I don't set my own pay, that's set by a remuneration committee.
00:07 That's the first bonus that I've taken in my time in Centric. In the number of years I've given up bonuses because of the hardships that customers are facing.
00:14 I thought it was right that we put a lot of our money, a lot of our profits into supporting customers.
00:19 But you can't justify a salary of that size.
00:23 Can you say that again? You can't justify it?
00:26 No, you can't because it's a huge amount of money. To anybody looking at this, it's a huge amount of money.
00:29 If you say you can't justify it, I mean, we're the best one in the world and I'm trying to be straight with you. Why take it?
00:36 I suppose for the same reason that, I mean, if you look, the average wage in the UK is about £30,000.
00:41 All of us sitting here on this sofa will make substantially more than £30,000.
00:45 It's not for me to set my own pay. It's not for you to set your own pay.
00:49 But you've got to recognise that when you've got people that are struggling, like the customer we saw, they are struggling for payments.
00:54 And I look at my mum who's in the basic state pension, it's just impossible to justify, so there's no point in trying to do that.
00:59 in trying to do that.
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