Fuel Prices

Marcus Jones Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

I shall make a little progress, if I may.

Returning to the point I was making, when the oil price rises, it is a different story. In December last year, oil prices rose by a fraction, and the fuel price at the pumps instantly rose faster and higher. No market is perfect, but the question for oil wholesalers to answer is this: why are they always benefiting, rather than smaller forecourts or the consumer? It is not just motorists who are being crushed; small retailers are being crushed, too.

In January, independent retailers gave the OFT evidence proving that there is anticompetitive pricing, and that 300 smaller forecourts are being forced out of business every year, leading to petrol deserts in some towns. The fact is that most smaller petrol stations are forced to buy from just a few large oil companies, and at massively higher prices than their “own brand” stations down the road.

[Mr Marcus Jones]

My hon. Friend is making an important point. Does he agree that it is telling that whereas in 1991 there were 19,247 petrol forecourts in this country, as of last year that figure had fallen to 8,480, despite the fact that the number of cars on British roads had risen by 10 million?

[Robert Halfon]

The situation my hon. Friend describes is tragic, because when rural communities in particular lose their petrol station, they do not just lose a petrol station: they lose a vital community asset. May I give special thanks to my hon. Friend, too, as were it not for him and the Backbench Business Committee, of which he is a member, we would not be debating this issue today?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who is a doughty campaigner on fuel prices. He should be thanked by the general public throughout the country for that. The problem is dear to many of my constituents’ hearts for a number of reasons, and like most right hon. and hon. Members I have had postbags full of correspondence from my constituents—not just in the last few weeks, but for many months.

I wholeheartedly support the motion and concur with many of the views that hon. Members have expressed today. We urgently need an investigation by the Financial Services Authority and the Office of Fair Trading. That is the will not only of hon. Members who have signed the motion, but of the public, so strongly do they feel. Oil companies and traders come up with all sorts of reasons why what hon. Members have said today is not true, and say that they are urban myths, but neither hon. Members nor the public are convinced by their arguments.

I should like to mention one or two unanswered questions that hon. Members have not mentioned. They mentioned the differential. In my constituency, which is probably one of the most urban county constituencies in the country, there is a differential of between 9p and 10p from one side to the other—a distance of five or six miles—which is astounding.

Twenty years ago, many of us chose to buy diesel cars because diesel was far cheaper than petrol. All of a sudden, the cost of diesel seems to have accelerated and outstripped the cost of petrol—on average, diesel is currently about 5p a litre more expensive. There must be a reason for that, and we need an answer.

I am short of time and have not mentioned most of the things I wanted to mention, but I implore the Minister to continue to pursue this issue. Please do not let the regulators off the hook, and please urge them to put a solution in place. We need a proper investigation—with teeth—that has an outcome for our constituents.