Fuel Retailers Urged To Back Government Price Sharing Scheme

Supermarkets and other fuel retailers have until August to voluntarily share live prices in a government scheme designed to prevent overcharging. It follows a report that found drivers paid an extra 6p per litre for fuel at supermarkets last year due to weak competition. Drivers will be able to compare live prices online to find cheaper fuel. But campaign group FairFuelUK said the “jury was still out” on the scheme’s effectiveness.

Energy Secretary Grant Shapps will meet bosses from Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and other major fuel retailers on Monday, who will be “held to account for any failure to pass on savings to consumers”. Announcing the scheme earlier in July, Mr Shapps said the government wanted to “shine a light on rip-off retailers”. The secretary of state will give retailers until next month to agree to the voluntary Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) scheme to share live fuel prices, in order to improve transparency and increase competition. “Act now or face the full force to the law,” the Department for Energy Security said. A failure to comply would see retailers legally forced to share their prices, it added.

Petrol and diesel prices jumped to record highs following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, but have since dropped significantly. However, the CMA, the UK’s competition watchdog, investigated the UK fuel market earlier this year following concerns falling wholesale prices were not being passed on to consumers. It concluded competition was “not working as well as it should be”. The CMA found average annual supermarket margins on fuel had increased by 6p per litre between 2019 and 2022 – equivalent to £900m in extra costs for drivers. Howard Cox established Fair Fuel UK to campaign for more “honesty, fairness and transparency” in fuel pricing in 2010.

He said: “If it [the voluntary scheme] doesn’t have teeth, they will have to have full regulatory powers and fine retailers. But the jury’s still out for me… we’ll wait to see what comes out of Monday’s meeting.” Mr Cox said he would like to see retailers commit to a “kitemark scheme” in which they pledged to offer “honest and fair pricing”. “It’s very simple and that’s something motorists can see as they are driving past,” he continued. The campaigner said the current system was “opaque” and called for every garage owner and retailer to input live prices to a database daily so “we can see for once in our lives how prices are arrived at”.

“The phrase it goes up like a rocket and down like a feather couldn’t be truer than with petrol prices,” he added. Earlier this month, the government said that under its new initiative, drivers would be able to access live, station-by-station fuel prices on their phones or satnavs. At present, retailers only provide price information at petrol stations themselves, making it hard to compare rates, although some websites try to collate this data. Driving groups say the idea, which is used elsewhere in Europe, is overdue.