British Gas owner's boss admits he 'can't justify' £4.5m salaryBreakfast, BBC
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00:00 OK, there was a second part of that question, is your bonuses.
00:03 Yes, so my pay last year was £4.5 million.
00:07 And that is a salary, or is that a bonus?
00:09 No, no, that's a salary, that's a bonus in a long-term share scheme.
00:12 When you say those words, and you've been very honest with us,
00:15 and we appreciate that, you've said it straightforwardly,
00:18 and you know that there are people watching this
00:20 who are struggling to pay their bills, maybe to your company,
00:25 what goes on in your head?
00:27 So, look, it's a huge amount of money.
00:29 I am incredibly fortunate.
00:30 I don't set my own pay, that's set by a remuneration committee.
00:33 That's the first bonus that I'd taken in my time in Centric.
00:36 In the number of years I'd given up bonuses
00:38 because of hardships that customers were facing,
00:40 I thought it was right that we put a lot of our money,
00:43 a lot of our profits into supporting customers.
00:46 But you can't justify a salary of that size.
00:49 Can you say that again? You can't justify...
00:52 Because it's a huge amount of money.
00:54 To anybody looking at this, it's a huge amount of money.
00:56 OK, if you say you can't justify it,
00:57 I mean, we're the best one in the world,
01:00 and I'm trying to be straight with you, why take it?
01:03 I suppose for the same reason that...
01:05 I mean, if you look, the average wage in the UK is about £30,000.
01:08 All of us sitting here on this sofa
01:09 will make substantially more than £30,000.
01:12 It's not for me to set my own pay.
01:14 It's not for you to set your own pay.
01:16 But you've got to recognise that when you've got people
01:18 that are struggling, like the customer we saw,
01:19 they are struggling for payments.
01:21 I look at my mum, who's in the basic state pension,
01:23 it's just impossible to justify,
01:25 so there's no point in trying to do that.