Boris Johnson to consider using army to supply
petrol stations
Ministers to discuss emergency plan Operation Escalin
after BP reveals a third of its forecourts have shortages
Aubrey
Allegretti
@breeallegretti
Sun 26 Sep
2021 20.28 BST
Hundreds of
soldiers could be scrambled to deliver fuel to petrol stations running dry
across the country due to panic buying and a shortage of drivers under an
emergency plan expected to be considered by Boris Johnson on Monday.
The prime
minister will gather senior members of the cabinet to scrutinise “Operation
Escalin” after BP admitted that a third of its petrol stations had run out of
the main two grades of fuel, while the Petrol Retailers Association (PRA),
which represents almost 5,500 independent outlets, said 50% to 90% of its
members had reported running out. It predicted that the rest would soon follow.
The
developments led to growing fears that the UK could be heading into a second
“winter of discontent” and warnings that shelves could be emptier than usual in
the run-up to Christmas.
In a bid to
prevent the crisis from deepening further, ministers including the business
secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, transport secretary Grant Shapps and home secretary
Priti Patel gathered for a midday meeting on Sunday to discuss options –
including Operation Escalin.
Conceived
years ago during the planning for a no-deal Brexit, it would mean hundreds of
soldiers being drafted in to drive a reserve fleet of 80 tankers. It is
understood that it would take up to three weeks to fully implement, because
some of those mobilised may already be on other deployments and others could be
reservists. Escalin was touted as an option last week, but government sources
downplayed the chance of its activation.
Late on
Sunday night, Kwarteng also announced that fuel firms would be temporarily
excluded from the Competition Act for the purposes of sharing information and
optimising supply. He admitted there had been “some issues with supply chains”,
but insisted there was still “plenty of fuel at refineries and terminals”.
Officials said the move would make it easier for firms to “share information,
so that they can more easily prioritise the delivery of fuel to the parts of
the country and strategic locations that are most in need”.
The Escalin
and other proposals will be put to Johnson on Monday afternoon, in a meeting
where ministers are also expected to discuss more immediate solutions to try to
influence people’s behaviour and put an end to the current levels of panic
buying.
Ministers
are exasperated because they think that the true magnitude of fuel shortages
would have been tiny if the public were acting normally, and the HGV driver
shortage would have only had a marginal effect, but media reports have prompted
queues outside forecourts across the country. The PRA said demand at one
service station had risen by 500% on Saturday compared with last week.
A source
suggested that a high level of shortages will last at least another five days –
and could go on even longer if people’s behaviour does not change. They called
the situation a “catch-22”, because by making any interventions, the government
could end up exacerbating the problem: “The more we seem to react to this, the
more we end up driving it. But if we don’t react, it just carries on. We’re
almost generating our own crisis.”
The
shortage has also had major knock-on effects that ministers feel need urgent
remedying, with teachers and doctors unable to fill up their tank to drive to
school or hospital. The blunt communications strategy of insisting there is no
lack of fuel is likely to be shifted to urging people to be mindful of others
when buying petrol.
Attention
is also turning to Christmas. Kate Martin of the Traditional Farm-fresh Turkey
Association (TFTA) said the UK could face a “national shortage” of turkeys in
the run-up to December.
The TFTA,
which represents producers of high-end free-range turkeys, said it was “100%
caused by a labour shortage” due to post-Brexit immigration rules, meaning “a
whole host” of the workforce is “no longer available for us to use on a
seasonal basis”.
The British
Retail Consortium also said moves to relax immigration rules to fix supply
chain issues was “too little, too late” for Christmas.
Andrew
Opie, the group’s director of food and sustainability policy, predicted to the
BBC that during the festive season, shoppers would see “less choice, less
availability, possibly shorter shelf life as well, which is really
disappointing because this could have been averted”.
Jim
McMahon, Labour’s shadow transport secretary, claimed the government’s solution
of streamlining HGV tests and granting about 5,000 extra visas for drivers and
another 5,000 for poultry workers was “not good enough”. He said if ministers
did not do more, “shelves will continue to be bare, with medicines not
delivered and Christmas ruined for the nation”.
A Tory MP,
David Morris, spelled out the scale of the challenge facing the government. He
said: “I can remember the winter of discontent and I remember what was building
up to it and this to me feels very, very reminiscent.”
Morris told
the Guardian: “We’re not anywhere near that situation yet, but there are
perfect storm analogies coming along that could put us into that territory.” He
stressed it was a “historic problem” that ministers were trying to address, but
admitted the pressure Covid was likely to put on the NHS this winter and the
looming end of the universal credit uplift would make it a challenging winter
for many.
Shapps on
Sunday urged people to “be sensible” and blamed “one of the road haulage
associations” for what he called a manufactured crisis, suggesting on Sky News
that the group had leaked details from a meeting last week about driver
shortages at fuel firms. However, the Road Haulage Association branded it a
“disgraceful attack” concocted to “divert attention away” from the government’s
handling of the issue.
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