Energy giants SSE and E.ON are re-evaluating their involvement with the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) following a recent scandal.

The CBI has acknowledged its failure to eliminate “culturally toxic people” from its membership, resulting in “terrible consequences” including allegations of sexual harassment.

Mr McBride said: “Our systems of culture management, harm prevention and eradication were insufficient. Individually, some – though not all – of these organisational deficiencies may even seem small. But, together, they compounded to cause great harm to some of our own people, and then to the CBI as a whole.

“We didn’t put in place sufficient preventative measures to protect our people from those seeking to cause harm and we didn’t react properly when issues arose as a result.

“We failed to filter out culturally toxic people during the hiring process. We failed to conduct proper cultural onboarding of staff. Some of our managers were promoted too quickly without the necessary prior and ongoing training to protect our cultural values and to properly react when those values were violated. In assessing performance, we paid more attention to competence than to behaviour.”

A spokesperson for SSE told ELN: “We have suspended our engagement with the CBI and will be reviewing our membership.”

An E.ON spokesperson told ELN: “It’s right that these very serious allegations are investigated in the most thorough way and we will be pausing any and all engagements until that process is completed.”

ELN has reached out to CBI for comment.