Supermarket bosses will be facing energy secretary Grant Shapps after he warned he would hold retailers accountable if they continue to charge “sky high” petrol prices for customers.
He will talk with executives from Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, as well as those from fuel specialists BP, Shell and Esso this afternoon, vowing to read “rip-off retailers” the riot act over pump prices at the meeting, and tell them “enough is enough”.
“I want to now hear how they are going to fix this,” Shapps said in the Sun.
“I will be telling them to do the right thing and immediately end any attempt to overcharge at the pumps.”
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Shapps is set to call on the retailers to share their fuel prices live by the end of next month as part of a scheme designed to prevent overcharging.
Earlier this month the UK’s competition watchdog warned earlier this month that drivers in the UK paid an extra £900m extra in fuel last year, as they were charged an extra 6p per litre more.
As a result, the CMA said it would launch a voluntary scheme to provide customers with live, transparent fuel price data.
A number of supermarkets, such as Sainsbury’s, have already said they would welcome the scheme.
Downing Street said Shapps will spell out “that it’s clearly unacceptable to be overcharging drivers at the pump and that they need to pass on the savings to consumers, given that wholesale costs have fallen”.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “He will be calling on retailers to agree (to) the CMA’s voluntary scheme that would see them share their accurate road fuel prices by August so we can improve transparency and competition.”
The CMA kicked off its investigation into UK fuel retailer earlier this year amid concerns that wholesale price reductions were not being full passed onto customers.
The regulator cautioned that competition was “not working as well as it should be” in its initial report.
The watchdog also launched a probe into supermarket grocery pricing over concerns that grocers could be profiteering from soaring food and drink inflation and is expected to unveil initial findings this month.
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