We got it right on petrol says Hague
‘Jerry can’ advice defended despite pushing up prices
MINISTERS did nothing wrong by urging people to hoard petrol, William Hague claimed last night, as truckers warned they would join any strike by tanker drivers to ‘bring Britain to a halt’.
The Foreign Secretary said ministers such as Francis Maude, who told people to fill their cars and keep jerry cans of fuel at home, had done ‘absolutely the right thing’.
With polls showing support for the Coalition plummeting, Mr Hague suggested that panic buying had made Britain more resilient to any strikes.
He said: ‘The country is in a better state of preparedness than a week ago for the eventuality of a tanker strike, so I think they have handled that correctly. My colleagues have done absolutely the right thing to urge people to take sensible precautions and they will be vindicated.’ But petrol stations are expected to push up the price of fuel by as much as 10p this week after many forecourts ran dry. Some are not due to see their empty pumps replenished until Friday. Fuel prices hit a record average high last Friday of 141.4p a litre for unleaded and 147.38p for diesel after demand rose more than three-fold.
There were calls for Cabinet Office Minister Mr Maude to resign for sparking the wave of panic buying last week.
Critics also held him partly responsible for the severe burns suffered by 46-year-old mother of-two Diane Hill, who was injured as she poured petrol from a jerry can into a jug near a naked flame in her kitchen.
She was said to be in a critical condition at a specialist burns unit at Pinderfields hospital in Wakefield last night, following the accident in Acomb, York, on Thursday.
The crisis seemed far from over last night as thousands of truckers said they would blockade refineries and cause gridlock on motorways if the Unite union called a walkout of tanker drivers, torpedoing Government plans to use Army drivers in tankers.
Haulier Andrew Spence, who played a key role in the blockades in 2000 that led to 3,000 petrol stations running out of fuel, threatened to bring down the Coalition unless fuel prices were cut. Mr
‘It is out of touch’
Spence, from County Durham, said: ‘We have been in negotiations with the tanker drivers since 2000. We have said to them we may have to stand beside them in any protest.
‘We are better organised than in 2000. This time we will bring the Government down.’
He said the action was a ‘last resort’ because hauliers and farmers were going bust.
‘People are going to the wall. The pressure we are under is ridiculous,’ he added.
Chancellor George Osborne’s failure to drop a fuel duty rise in the Budget dismayed Tories and added to a sense that Mr Cameron’s inner circle is out of touch.
A Tory minister said: ‘All the attention has been on pasties and pensioners but the failure to cut fuel duty is starting to look like the most grievous mistake of the lot. The myth of George Osborne’s infallibility has been destroyed.’
No 10 denied reports that the PM told the Cabinet last week that ‘a bit of petrol panic may be no bad thing’ as it would turn people against Unite.
But journalist Charles Moore, a friend of the PM, revealed MPS were told to persuade party members the Coalition was trying to ape Mrs Thatcher’s decision to stockpile coal before the 1984 miners’ strike. ‘This is our Thatcher moment,’ MPS were told.
In a speech today Labour leader Ed Miliband will say: ‘The last two weeks have exposed the true face of David Cameron’s Tory-led government.
‘We end up with a government that decides to play politics with petrol supplies. A government that said it would change things for the better but is only making life worse. A government that is out of touch.’
Unite, which represents 2,062 tanker drivers, is to hold talks with seven fuel firms at the conciliation service Acas today.