PM says UK fuel situation improving but urges motorists to go about business in ‘normal way’– business live
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as the UK’s supply chain crisis continues
- Latest: Boris Johnson says situation is improving
- But doesn’t back calls for medical staff to get priority fuel
- Petrol retailers: early signs that crisis is easing
- Grant Shapps says ‘signs of stabilisations’ in petrol storage
- Shapps: don’t fill up water bottles with fuel
- Retailers: extreme demand has eased
- Unions: Teachers should get priority fuel
- Intro: More queues and shortages at petrol stations this morning
Opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer has accused the government of leading Britain “from crisis to crisis”.
And he has called for key workers to be offered priority at the petrol pumps to ease the fuel crisis (an idea Boris Johnson suggested wasn’t necessary in his interview, as things are apparently improving).
Boris Johnson says key workers won't get priority at petrol pumps amid fuel shortages https://t.co/KCXI9jPQYh
“The government has reduced the country to chaos as we track from crisis to crisis and the government is not gripping this.
“What I would do is give priority to key workers this week.”
“The prime minister should take that action today, prioritise key workers and start issuing enough visas and for long enough.”
Q. With a gas price hike, trucker shortages, food shortages, queues, the army on standby – you’d call this a crisis if anybody else was in Downing Street, wouldn’t you?
Boris Johnson repeats that the recovery in the world economy is to blame for supply chain problems:
What we’ve got is a global economy that is recovering from what has been a once-in-a-century pandemic. And that has caused some particular shortages. I’ve mentioned a couple – HGV drivers and gas.
And those shortages are a function of huge global demand, but we’re meeting them and what we have is all sorts of plans in place to make sure that as we go forward into the new year, that we have everything necessary to protect our supply chains and keep things moving.
But as I said, what we’re seeing now, what we’re hearing now from industry, is that the situation on the forecourts in our petrol stations is stabilising.
