The four bosses at energy supplier SSE who took home bonuses totalling £5.38million should hand them back and bring energy bills down.
That’s the demand of the Labour Party which has criticised the firm for awarding the bonuses over the same time SSE was fined a record £10.5million for misspelling to their customers.
The sum paid in bonuses is bigger than the compensation fund the supplier has set up to refund customers who were sold dodgy deals.
Labour’s Shadow Energy Minister, Tom Greatrex MP said: “Hard pressed families and pensioners struggling to pay their energy bills will not understand how SSE bosses can get away with paying themselves millions in bonuses for the period when they’ve been caught out ripping people off.
“The people responsible for this scandal should not be rewarded for failure. SSE’s top bosses should do the right thing and pay their bonuses back to the consumers who suffered.”
SSE responded to the criticism by suggesting “retail plays one part” of a director’s payment, adding in a statement: “The Board of SSE plc was advised of Ofgem’s formal statement of case against SSE in 2011. It took the issues raised by the case very seriously and as a result the company’s three Executive Directors received no payment in 2012 in respect of the corporate performance criterion of the company’s Annual Incentive Scheme. “