British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under increasing pressure to do more to ease a supply chain crisis in Britain after pumps ran dry at some gas stations because of panic-buying.
With a shortage of truck drivers raising the prospect of widening disruption to food and fuel deliveries in coming weeks, the British government late on Sunday moved to temporarily suspend competition rules and allow companies to coordinate fuel supplies to the most affected regions.
That came after Johnson announced measures, including a U-turn on relaxing immigration rules for foreign truckers and poultry workers, and called in army examiners to help increase driving tests for heavy goods vehicles.
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The prime minister is considering plans to use soldiers to drive tankers around the country, the Financial Times reported, citing unidentified officials.
“We have long-standing contingency plans in place to work with industry so that fuel supplies can be maintained and deliveries can still be made in the event of a serious disruption,” British Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Kwasi Kwarteng said.
Businesses and opposition politicians said that the 5,000 new visas for haulers until Christmas would barely scratch the surface of a 100,000 shortfall that has been exacerbated since the UK left the EU.
British Chambers of Commerce president Ruby McGregor-Smith said that the visas were like “throwing a thimble of water on a bonfire.”
While some countries across Europe are contending with soaring energy prices and pockets of labor shortages, the UK is facing a particularly taxing winter as it recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the past few weeks, hospitals have experienced a backlog of patients, supermarkets have had empty shelves and gas stations are now dealing with lines.
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has blamed Johnson’s government for failing to prepare for the consequences of Brexit.
The UK voted to leave the EU in 2016 and its post-departure transition agreement ended at the beginning of this year.
“We’ve got an absolute crisis in this country through a lack of planning on behalf of the government,” Starmer said.
BP, the second-largest fuel retailer in the UK, said that it had run out of the main grades of fuel at almost one-third of its stations.
Outside of the motorway network, at least half of the gas stations had run dry by Sunday, the Financial Times reported, citing Petrol Retailers Association chairman Brian Madderson.
British Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps on Sunday sought to allay concerns, telling BBC television: “There’s actually plenty of petrol to go around.”
The shortage of drivers for the fuel supply industry amounted to “one, two, three hundred,” he added.
Nevertheless, Shapps left open the prospect of drafting in the army to supply gas stations, saying: “We’ll do whatever’s required.”
The government had been insisting that haulage companies train up locals and pay them more.
The changes to the immigration rules — which also add 5,500 visas for poultry workers — lasts for 12 weeks.
Johnson has talked up Brexit as an opportunity to remake the British economy away from the EU’s rules and its labor pool. The argument is that foreign workers dragged down domestic wages and discouraged recruitment and training, but business says that it needs a longer period to transition away from that reliance on EU workers.
The food and fuel shortages add to a pile of daunting challenges for Johnson, with Britons facing a surge in electricity and gas prices just as some key pandemic support measures are unwound.
The furlough program that saw the government pay the wages of more than 11 million jobs during the pandemic ends on Thursday.
On Sunday, the Labour Party released an analysis showing that about 81,000 aviation workers are among those who risk losing their jobs when the furlough program closes.
On Wednesday next week, a £20 (US$27.40) weekly uplift on social security payments called Universal Credit comes to an end, a decision that has caused disquiet among Conservative rank and file because of its effect on poorer people.
Newspapers have started referring to a “winter of discontent,” a politically charged phrase evoking memories of 1978 to 1979 when the UK economy was brought to its knees by strikes and severe weather. It ultimately brought down the Labour government, ushering in the Conservatives under then-British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
“We’ve got energy shortages. We’ve got shortages in our supermarkets,” Starmer said. “We’ve got prices going up. We’ve got taxes going up on working families and we’ve got the government taking away a thousand pounds from those that need it most.”
Labour Party deputy leader Angela Rayner put it more bluntly, describing the Conservatives as “scum” at an event at the Labour’s annual conference.
That sparked a squabble within the party just when it was aiming to demonstrate to the electorate it was united and ready to govern.
On Sunday, she refused to apologize for using the word, saying that it was northern English working class “street language” and that she was only referring to members of the Cabinet.
“I was speaking to a group of activists to say you have got to get that fire in your belly,” she said.
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