The boss of Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, has said he "can't justify" his £4.5 million pay. Speaking on BBC breakfast, Chris O’Shea compared his remuneration package to those of presenters Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty who earn £190,000 and £335,000 a year respectively.
Video taken from BBC Breakfast Twitter feed
Video taken from BBC Breakfast Twitter feed
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00:00 Can you just give us some basics? You're sitting here now, you could be straight with us.
00:04 How much profit did your company make and how much bonus did you take last year?
00:10 So last year our profit, our pre-tax profit was £3.3 billion.
00:13 £3.3 billion?
00:15 £3.3 billion, yeah. That includes about £500 million for the business that we have sold,
00:19 but under accounting rules we had to recognise, so about £2.8 billion.
00:22 Within that British Gas Energy, the energy retail arm, made about £150 million.
00:27 Now in terms of the infrastructure, we don't actually own any of the gas or the electricity infrastructure in the UK.
00:33 It's a common misconception where people think British Gas own the gas pipelines.
00:37 We don't own any pipelines, we don't own any infrastructure.
00:39 We produce gas, we store gas. We produce electricity, we store electricity and we sell that to customers.
00:45 Okay, there was a second part of that question, is your bonuses.
00:49 Yes, so my pay last year was £4.5 million.
00:52 And that is a salary or is that a bonus?
00:55 No, no, that's a salary, that's a bonus and a long-term share scheme.
00:58 When you say those words, and you've been very honest with us and we appreciate that,
01:02 you've said it straightforwardly, and you know that there are people watching this
01:06 who are struggling to pay their bills, maybe to your company, what goes on in your head?
01:12 So look, it's a huge amount of money. I am incredibly fortunate.
01:16 I don't set my own pay, that's set by a remuneration committee.
01:19 That's the first bonus that I've taken in my time in Centric.
01:22 In the number of years I've given up bonuses because of hardships that customers are facing.
01:26 I thought it was right that we put a lot of our money, a lot of our profits into supporting customers.
01:31 But you can't justify a salary of that size.
01:35 Can you say that again? You can't justify it?
01:38 Because it's a huge amount of money. To anybody looking at this, it's a huge amount of money.
01:42 Okay, if you say you can't justify it, I mean, with the best one in the world,
01:46 and I'm trying to be straight with you, why take it?
01:49 I suppose for the same reason that, I mean, if you look, the average wage in the UK is about £30,000.
01:53 All of us sitting here on this sofa will make substantially more than £30,000.
01:57 It's not for me to set my own pay. It's not for you to set your own pay.
02:02 But you've got to recognise that when you've got people that are struggling,
02:05 like the customer we saw, they are struggling for payments.
02:07 I look at my mum who's in the basic state pension.
02:09 It's just impossible to justify, so there's no point in trying to do that.