UK temporarily suspends competition law for parts of CO2 industry; fuel shortages continue – as it happened

Boris Johnson’s government has made a dramatic U-turn in an attempt to save Christmas – with a raft of extended emergency visas to help abate labour shortages that have led to empty shelves and petrol station queues, Rajeev Syal writes.

New immigration measures will allow 300 fuel drivers to arrive immediately and stay until the end of March, while 100 army drivers will take to the roads from Monday, the government announced late on Friday.

About 4,700 further food haulage drivers will arrive from late October and leave by the end of February.

The rules mean that the government has relented to lobbying from the fuel and food industries and extended some temporary visa schemes beyond Christmas Eve and into the new year.

The move, designed to tackle chronic disruption to supply chains, is a major change in policy after ministers previously insisted they would not relax immigration rules in response to the crisis.

It comes as Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, demanded that parliament should be recalled to sort out the fuel and food shortages.

Almost 200 military personnel, including 100 drivers, will be deployed from Monday to provide temporary support as part of the government’s wider action to further relieve pressure on petrol stations and address the shortage of HGV drivers.

Here’s the full story:

And here’s how some of the other papers are reporting it too:

Time to recap.

Here’s all today’s stories on the supply chain crisis:

And in other news...

Goodnight. GW

Britain’s soaring energy prices, fuel shortages and problems in the food industry all add to an EFFing pain for consumers and businesses.

According to James Forsyth of The Times today, even those in government are calling it the ‘EFFing crisis’.

And it will dampen the mood at the Conservative party conference, he writes:

It is hard to be celebratory (and would be politically foolish to be so) with motorists struggling to fill up their cars. Even if the government doesn’t appear — yet — to be paying a political price for the crisis, it is no time for back-slapping.

Ministers are acutely aware that even if petrol queues ease in the coming days, the autumn will be full of such difficulties. What is known in government as the EFFing crisis — energy, fuel and food — will be a theme of the next few months. Even cabinet optimists think the shortage of lorry drivers will produce flare-ups over the coming months as supply chains come under pressure.

The Daily Mail have seized on the term too, saying tonight that:

The ‘EFFing crisis’: Ministers are bracing for months of energy chaos, fuel shortages and empty food shelves as they admit motorists face weeks of queues at filling stations which are running out of petrol faster than they can be resupplied

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called on Boris Johnson to take “emergency” action to address the shortage of lorry drivers which, he said, was threatening to ruin Christmas.

Starmer said the PM should if necessary recall Parliament to rush through legislation to ensure the shelves remain stocked in the run up to the festive season, warning that the scheme to issue 5,000 temporary visas to foreign lorry drivers would not be up and running “for weeks”.

“I don’t want people in this country to have another Christmas ruined by this Prime Minister’s lack of planning.

Every day wasted is prolonging this crisis. The Government has been talking about issuing visas but still hasn’t done anything.

“The Prime Minister should be taking emergency action today but yet again he’s failed to grasp the seriousness of the crisis.

“If it needs legislation, then let’s recall Parliament to get these emergency measures through urgently. The Prime Minister needs to get a grip.”

Here’s a clip of Starmer making his case to Sky:

Sky News has suggested that Britain’s military is likely to be deployed this weekend to assist with fuel deliveries to gas stations,

The military is currently on standby to help alleviate the shortage of truck drivers -- and the Petrol Retailers Association has suggested there’s little sign of improvement at the pumps today.

Earlier this week, 150 soldiers were being mobilised to help boost supplies at forecourts hit by panic buying. The troops are HGV qualified but need extra training to enable them to drive huge fuel tankers.

In the City, the FTSE 100 ended the day down 59 points or 0.85% at 7027 points, its lowest close in over a week.

Travel and hospitality companies led the risers, such as airline group IAG (+5.3%), and hotel groups InterContinental (+3.5%) and Whitbread (+2.7%).

Danni Hewson, AJ Bell financial analyst, points out that energy companies had a strong week, with crude oil hitting three-year highs on Tuesday.

“Having spent an hour enjoying the charms of nearby petrol stations it doesn’t surprise me at all to see that that week’s big winner on the FTSE 100 was Royal Dutch Shell and BP’s not done too shabbily either. To be fair the third forecourt I drove onto was fully supplied and disconcertingly queue free so perhaps the situation really is improving but that’s little comfort to anyone still struggling to fill up.

Focussing on today and it does seem there has been a fair bit of bargain hunting going but even a boost to the travel industry from Australia’s border relaxation hasn’t been able to pull markets out of the red.

European markets also began October on the back foot, with the pan-European Stoxx 600 down 0.4%.

1 Oct 202112.48 EDT

Full story: Up to 120,000 pigs in UK face culling due to lack of abattoir workers

Mark Sweney

Farmers have warned that up to 120,000 pigs face being culled because of a lack of abattoir workers, as acute labour shortages across supply chains continue to wreak havoc on the UK economy.

Rob Mutimer, the chair of the National Pig Association (NPA), said Britain was facing an “acute welfare disaster” within a matter of weeks, with farmers forced to kill their livestock because of an acute shortage of butchers and slaughterers.

“We are within a couple of weeks of having to consider a mass cull of animals in this country,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday.

“We think our backlog is in the region of 100,000 to 120,000 as we stand today. And it is growing by around 12,000 a week. This is happening on pig farms all over the country; they are backed up and running out of space to keep animals.”

One farmer said they were being told to expect further reductions next week in the number of animals able to be transported, as there were not enough workers at meat-processing plants to handle the loads.

“The problem in the industry has got considerably worse over the last three weeks,” said Mutimer.

“[A cull] involves either shooting them on the farm or taking them to an abattoir and disposing of them in a skip. These animals won’t go into the food chain, they will either be rendered or sent for incineration. It is an absolute travesty.”

Just in: Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has temporarily exempted parts of the UK’s carbon dioxide industry from competition law.

The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy has announced that the move will help provide “further security of carbon dioxide supplies” to UK businesses, after the UK ran short of CO₂ last month.

Companies in the UK CO₂ industry will be granted a short exemption from the Competition Act 1998, to help them share information and optimise supply.

The move will make it easier for the industry to avoid disruption to supplies and prioritise the delivery of CO₂– an essential component of the national economy – to parts of the country and industries that need it most, such as the food sector, BEIS says.

It will also allow companies to discuss specifics of purchasing and pricing, as the government aims to reach a long-term market-based solution with producers over the next two weeks.

Last week, the government reached a deal with US firm CF Industries to restart carbon dioxide (CO₂) production at its fertiliser plant in Billingham, Teesside, after it halted work due to soaring natural gas prices.

CO₂ is widely used in the food industry for packaging, and for the slaughter of animals at abattoirs, as well as in other industrial operations. Ministers had been warned that CO₂ shortages could effectively bring production to a halt throughout the supply chain, leading to empty shelves.

BEIS says today that CF Fertilisers’ plant in Billingham is now operating at full capacity and shipping CO₂ to UK businesses, following the deal with the UK.

Also, major commercial CO₂ producer Ensus has reopened its Wilton plant following temporary closure for planned maintenance, further securing supplies. The Wilton plant can produce up to 40% of the UK’s CO₂ requirements, BEIS says.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng says discussions with industry to deliver a long-term solution have made good progress.

Companies in the CO₂ industry can now work together to ensure that key sectors receive the supplies they need and come to a sustainable market solution.

Coupled with Ensus resuming production and CF Fertilisers ramping up operations, we are helping to make this critical industry stronger and more resilient.

Last Sunday, the government suspended competition law for the fuel industry, to help oil firms to target deliveries at petrol stations, after the surge in panic buying.

Newsnight’s Lewis Goodall reports:

The Independent reports that the government has asked thousands of Germans residing in the UK to drive lorries to assist with the HGV shortage, even if they have never driven one before (!).

Germans citizens based in the UK were, it appears, included in the mass mailing from the Department for Transport, asking them to “consider returning” to the HGV driving sector.

The Independent’s Tom Peck explains:

German driving licences issued before 1999 include an entitlement to drive a small to medium-sized truck of up to 7.5 tonnes. It is understood that almost all Germans residing in the UK who hold such a licence have been sent the letter, almost none of whom have ever driven an HGV before.

One 41-year-old German man, who received two copies of the letter at his London home on Friday morning, one addressed to him and another for his wife, told The Independent.

We were quite surprised,” he said. “I’m sure pay and conditions for HGV drivers have improved, but ultimately I have decided to carry on in my role at an investment bank. My wife has never driven anything larger than a Volvo, so she is also intending to decline the exciting opportunity.

“It is nice to know there are specialist jobs available here for us though after Brexit. We would never have been headhunted to drive a lorry if we’d gone back to Germany.”

The Department of Transport has said that data protection rules meant they were unable to filter the results to remove those with German drivers’ licences (or other groups such as ambulance drivers, who also got the letter).

All part of the transition to a high-pay, low-immigration post-Brexit economy, no doubt....

Motorists have been queuing in Ascot High Street for fuel at the Esso petrol station today:

View image in fullscreen

View image in fullscreen

1 Oct 202110.09 EDT

Winchester’s goodwill for the Tories runs short amid anger over fuel crisis

Rupert Neate

The petrol shortages have left some voters in the once true-blue Hampshire seat of Winchester questioning the government’s handling of the crisis.

My colleague Rupert Neate reports:

Helen Nott is angry, and her wrath is directed at one man: Boris Johnson.

“I am angry, I can control it, but I am really very angry,” she says as she walks to the shops on Winchester high street with her mother, a pensioner.

“I’m actually really glad you stopped me to talk about it, otherwise I would just have been bending my mother’s ear about it all day.”

Nott, a teacher, is primarily angry about the fuel crisis, which has led her to leave her car at home all week and walk more than she would like. However, she says the tanker driver shortage is “just the latest in a long line of crises that [the government] expect us to bumble through”.

“All of this could have been avoided with a bit of strategic thinking,” she says.

“But it feels like there’s no one in charge, no one that knows what’s going on. Boris thinks he’s in charge, and I think that’s the problem.”

Here’s the full piece:

Times Radio’s Tom Newton Dunn reports that his local petrol stations are still dry....

...and he’s not alone:

1 Oct 202109.46 EDT

DVLA bosses and staff clash over Covid safety and HGV licence delays

Steven Morris

When the letter from the UK government dropped through Antony Crowther’s letter box this week, the frustration that had been building for months turned to rage, my colleague Steven Morris writes.

Signed by the transport minister Charlotte Vere, the letter told him his “valuable skills and experience” as a HGV driver had never been more needed. Would he please consider getting behind the wheel again?

That is exactly what Crowther wants to do but can’t because his application to get his licence back after a medical emergency is snarled up in a backlog at the DVLA – the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency – in Swansea, south Wales.

“I’ve spent so many hours trying to get through to the DVLA and the transport department to sort my licence out,” said Crowther, 61, from Plymouth.

“I want to do my bit and help out. Yes, the money comes in useful but it’s not just about that. I like to feel I’m helping by getting stuff moving around the country.”

As the scale of the crisis at the DVLA emerged this week, a row has broken out over who is to blame. Workers and their union representatives claim mismanagement during the Covid pandemic at the DVLA has led to the problems. The government and the DVLA blame staff who have been on strike over their working conditions.

It could get worse. Covid cases continue to blight the DVLA, an executive agency of the Department for Transport (DfT), and more industrial action may be on the way this autumn and winter.....

Here’s the full story: